Artifacts - 1950 to 2003
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This all started when I was about 4 or 5 years old, right here where I live, now. Mom and I were walking along the back yard next to the field behind the house and I saw an "arrowhead" there on the turned over, plowed ground. I do not know how I knew what it was but went over and picked it up. I have been told, I carried it around with me all the time and by doing that, it got some chips knocked out of it. Unknown to me at that time, Mom took it away from me, to protect it. One day I came home from high school and there it was on the dresser and I recognized it, immediately. In the mean time, I continued to walk our plowed fields in the spring and by then, had found quite a few good ones and quite a few more broken pieces. In later years I learned that the first artifact, indeed was a knife, not an arrowhead! Again, in the mean years, I had found several "triangles" which are the real arrowheads. Among other pieces found are pin drills, twist drills, many more knives, scrapers, specialty scrapers with notches, spears, sliver knives, blanks, jewelry made out of Shale, and some banner stones, hammer stones, corn or grain grinders, axes, and tomahawk heads. On one Shale piece you can see the drill marks in the bore! This entire collection is "random surface find", none found by excavation. Comparing several pieces I have found to known carbon test dated pieces, these range up to 10,000 years old!
The most exciting piece I ever found and the most excited I ever got was one morning, June 10, 1959, when I was cultivating corn and I got a glimpse of something on the right side of the tractor. I stopped and immediately got off. I brushed around in the dirt where I thought it was and didn't find anything, so I pulled the tractor forward some more and brushed around behind the right tire. BINGO, a perfect, 5 1/2" long Dovetail made of Flint Ridge material. This thing is symmetrically perfect. After getting back on and finishing the row I screamed and hollered and ran back up to the house where Dad was and he asked "something wrong"? Then I had this thing in my right hand with the tip sticking out one side and tail sticking out the other side and asked him "which hand is it in"? I've never seen his eyes get that big! Needless to say, I had both feet planted firmly in mid air the rest of the day.
Credit must be given to A. J. Earley for donating some of the fantastic pieces featured on the grid and the massive 6 1/4" long beauty on the red velvet background. He said he found most of these back before he used tractors to farm, walking behind the horses.
Over the 50 years I have been walking the fields I have learned to go out after every time it rains, winter, spring, fall, anytime! The reason being, if a piece is covered with .001" of dirt, you would never know to look and you would not see it. The surface changes after every rain. That also explains why you probably won't find as many pieces is dark silt soil. It has rinsed down from a higher location probably covering up stuff even deeper. Remember, the high spots are getting lower and the low spots are getting higher, natural soil erosion.
This collection of approximately 500, very good condition, artifacts is no representation of the thousands of broken pieces I have that I cannot match up, YET. I have been able to match up 5 pieces, so far, after 50 years of collecting and the boxes of broken pieces. You can only assume, the other pieces are still out there, somewhere, buried however deep!
I will never give up walking and looking for artifacts. You would be amazed at what you might find, buttons, coins, lead bullets, round nails, square cut nails, broken pottery, tools, horseshoes, or other neat looking stones (misc. 1, misc. 2).
Happy hunting
Bruce