Some Goodies from the Fall Field Season

My field team has been working around Washington for the past six weeks, and they have found a few nice specimens. The spear point above is most likely a type called a Fox Creek, so dating to between 500 BCE and 500 CE.

Small spear or dart point, not really datable but quite likely from the Halifax culture of 4000 to 3000 BCE.

Triangular point. Most small triangular points you find in my part of the world are arrowheads dating to Late Woodland times c. 900 to 1600 CE. But a triangle is a pretty obvious shape for any cutting tool, and it seems that triangular points were made in earlier times as well. Because of some details of the shape and where it was found we think this is an Archaic triangle, c. 5000 to 3000 BCE. We found several of these a few years ago at a Halifax culture site radiocarbon dated to around 3700 BCE.

This point is interesting because it has been resharpened down to just a nub. It probably started out with a blade an inch or even two inches long (2-5 cm), but then that blade either broke or was dulled from cutting and the tool resharpened and reused. It is important to remember that many stone tools were initially made large and then shrank with use, since resharpening inevitably meant knocking of a good bit of the blade.

And a crude chipped stone ax, possibly unfinished. This probably dates to Halifax times, c. 4000 to 3000 BCE.