Message from the Stone

One of my favorite things to do is to hunt arrowheads and artifacts in the riverbottoms around here. We have found some paleo period artifacts, but most date to the archaic, woodland and mississippian (moundbuilder) times. All of them are before written history and before contact with European settlers. Let me clarify, there is a big difference between hunting and collecting. Anyone with money can be a collector. Artifact shows and sales take place all over the country, and the world, for that matter. You can even find them at yard sales and estate sales. I am a hunter. I have never paid a penny for any of the artifacts in my possession. Don't know how you calculate the value of the sweat and hours spent walking bent double in order to find them. In fact, I consider the hours spent outdoors, away from civilization, able to leave the day to day bullshit behind to be an added value, rather than a cost. I have no doubts whether mine are authentic or not. I am the first human being to hold them in my hand in thousands of years. A feeling like no other. There are places where you may find a couple of artifacts in an entire afternoon of walking, and others where amazing amounts of "lithic scatter" and "debitage" are visible. You can not even set your foot down without walkin on something. Lithic scatter is pieces or chunks of stone that have been broken off or broken open from material deemed suitable for projectile point or stone tool manufacture. It was the way stone was transported from a quarry to a seasonal campsite in the times of hunter-gatherer cultures, and later, to a permanent village, starting in late archaic to early woodland times. The reward for locating these places, and spending hour upon hour searching them, is to find an intact finished product of manufacture, i.e. projectile point, hide scraper, nutting stone, celt, adze, knife and so on. Hell, broken points and worn items are worth it from my perspective. I don't have the words to describe the feeling of reaching down to inspect a sliver of rock partially exposed and pulling out a recognizable object. Not a piece of history--a piece of pre-history! Knowing that thousands of years ago, another human had made this object from raw stone, and had depended on it to feed, clothe, and protect his and her family is an indescribable thrill, combined with a feeling of reverence, honor and awe. Anyways, enough of the lecture. Here is a tribute written by Tony Raggio that comes close to describing what runs through my mind whenever i find a new one, and even when i handle the ones that have been in my possession for years now. The tribute is his, the background image is mine. I made it several years ago, by laying an assortment of my pieces on the scanner bed and saving the resulting image just because. I'm glad i did, it came in right handy.