An intriguing find

Last Friday I came across a neat piece of history--I was taking a walk through one of the parcels of land on the UAM campus when I spotted this point lying on the surface of a road cut. I had walked past this spot dozens of times over the last few years, and never saw this point, so it must have washed out following recent rains. I asked Dr. Marvin Jeter, UAM Station archeologist, and he identified it as a "Gary Point" typical of the Late Archaic period--or about 3 to 5 thousand years old! The point is almost 4 inches long and about 1.5 inches at its widest, and it still surprisingly sharp. Note how I have not called this an "arrowhead", as true arrow points are much smaller than this, and of much more recent vintage. This point would have been on a spear or dart, and Dr. Jeter thinks that because of its quality, it may never have been used to hunt, but rather may have been produced for a more ceremonial purpose (perhaps even a burial!). I hope to return to this spot soon with one of the station archeologists to do some further sampling.

I have become more involved with the local archeological society over the last few years, and I have really enjoyed the association. On one of our projects, some student workers were using a metal detector to try to relocate property corners (often marked with an iron rod). On this one corner, they had no luck finding anything except some unusually heavy, dense, and metallic rocks atypical of the location. Curious, I took them to Dr. Jeter, thinking they may have been waste materials (slag) from the forge of historic logging camp. Turns out they were pieces of a natural rock called magnetite (an iron ore) that gets its name from the weak magnetic properties it has. One of the Late Archaic cultures from the region (the Poverty Point Culture, named after a mound site in northeast Louisiana called Poverty Point) had widely established trade routes that shipped raw rock materials (lithics) that were turned into goods by craftsman. The magnetite rocks originally came from a large outcrop of this rock near Hot Springs, and were transported many miles before being worked into various products like fishing net weights. We have since returned to this site with the archeologists, and have dug up a number of other magnetite rocks and flakes from point making, suggesting this site was occupied at least briefly.

I look forward to future discoveries of archeological sites, and am always on the look-out for future opportunities. Don't be surprised if you come for a visit and we spend some time when tramping through the woods looking down at the ground for artifacts!