Who hunts native american points?

[Etter]

Finding "arrowheads" has become obsessive for me over the past few years. I probably have a collection of maybe 100 blades, atlatl points, arrow heads, and hammer stones and such. All of them have come from cherokee county, ga except for a single one I found on Jerry Russell's mid ga lease about a week ago. Love this stuff.

The latest research on new discoveries might prove that native people had been here over 20,000 years ago and arrived here by sea, rather than the bering land bridge as was always thought.

Genetic studies are backing all that up as well.  It's amazing to pick something up while hunting and find a tool from somebody that chased critters on the same land 20,000 or more generations ago.

[Etter]

By 20,000 or more generations, I mean because I havent found anything thatll date beyond 9000-11000 years

[The Vanilla Gorilla]

I spend a lot of time hunting artifacts. I've found everything from points, smoking pipes, axe heads, beads, boatstones.

[Trenton G.]

I've found a few, but only by accident. Usually when tilling the garden in the spring.

[Captain*Kirk]

Pretty cool. Any pictures of your finds?

[centaur]

I have probably stepped on a thousand of them, but have actually found only a couple. When I was a kid working summers on my uncle's farm in southern Arizona, we found lots of metates and a few tomahawk heads. I know a place in central Wyoming where there are lots of chips, but I never found a good arrowhead there.
Found a place when hunting in the Absaroka range where Indians had created a 'funnel', apparently to capture sheep, but I'm danged if I can find it again.

[Jon Stewart]

Just spent  month doing it.

[YosemiteSam]

They're pretty tough to find out here.  But they're around.  Obsidian was the local material.

I have a side interest in anthropology & ancient history.  The boat theory is plausible but it may be a combination of the two (land + sea).  They're not mutually exclusive.  

But, just a point on your dating, 20k generations is about 400k years (a generation being about 20 years).  The species Homo sapien (a.k.a. "modern humans") has only been around for about 200-250k years.  If I remember correctly, the evidence used in the sea route dated around 20-30k years ago, pre-dating the land bridge's existence, which is pretty cool and definitely throws a few assumptions into question.  But 25k years is only about 1250 generations.

[Etter]

Yeah. Added a 0 there. Im mostly reading about full coverage of the Americas by about 20k years ago. Reading a fantastic book right now called "Sapiens".

In North Ga, ours are mostly quartz with some flints thrown in that were traded from elsewhere. Its pretty neat. In the same camps, I find points that date back over 10k years ago and some that were probably from the time of occupation (true arrowhead bird points). People are people and the same places are appealing even thousands of years apart.

[fmscan]

GREAT topic, I have looked a lot for arrowheads but haven't been successful, been told you need to know what to look for, probably walked by several...

[KSCATTRAPR]

My parents had my sister and I out looking for arrowheads ever since we were 4 or 5 years old. This was a great family activity for us when we were growing up and I still get out and look whenever I can. Over the years we have found some pretty cool stuff.

Once my son is old enough, I will have him out doing the same thing. Looking for arrowheads really trains your eyes to pick out certain features. Pretty sure this has helped me find a few deer antlers while driving 60 mph down the highway.

[Etter]

I was very lucky to be on a lease that was clearcut and burned that was very heavily occupied. I only wish I had started looking a little earlier. If I had started this just after the burn, my collection would be in the thousands.

Ive looked extensively in the creeks up there but have had no luck in the gravel bars. My south ga friends are very lucky. They hunt freshly plowed fields after a solid rain. Basically if you see a rock down there, it is usually something. Whereas up here, you have to pick out white quartz points surrounded by thousands of white quartz rocks. There is a ton of debitage near where I find most of my stuff so when I start seeing that, I know to start really looking hard for edges. The best point ever found on that entire property was a green flint bolen bevel. It was expertly worked and heavily resharpened. My buddie's 7 year old daughter found it after he and I walked right over it.

[Rufus]

Here's a few.  Mostly parts and pieces but obviously worked on stuff.
Enough at different times to get my mind off hunting  
We have more by the way....  
 

[Etter]

Thats some great stuff there!  Whare from?

[Longtoke]

I always liked looking at the differnt types of points.

[YosemiteSam]

Originally posted by Etter:
Yeah. Added a 0 there. Im mostly reading about full coverage of the Americas by about 20k years ago. Reading a fantastic book right now called "Sapiens".

In North Ga, ours are mostly quartz with some flints thrown in that were traded from elsewhere. Its pretty neat. In the same camps, I find points that date back over 10k years ago and some that were probably from the time of occupation (true arrowhead bird points). People are people and the same places are appealing even thousands of years apart.

N. GA would later be mostly Cherokee land by the time Europeans got here.  A lot can change in 10k years so I don't know what the people were called back that far.  Have you been able to trace the cultural lines back very far to know what people those tools belonged to?

Pretty cool that you were able to track the source material.  You can tell a lot about people & their trade networks by knowing the nearest sources of raw material or finished goods.  Out here in CA, you can sometimes find bows, obsidian points and shell beads in the same village site, which is fun because those items are rarely made in any single place -- it shows wide trade networks.  The eastern US was more densely populated before the European invasion than out here, if I remember correctly.  I'd bet $ on an even wider network out there.

Cool stuff!

[RC]

I have a display at a local wma Heritage center. I have a lot of arrow heads and pottery. You can be in a boat on the rivers here and see high ground. You will think that it would be a good place to put a house. Go up there and there will be pottery every time.RC

[Etter]

Aside from a few true arrowheads, my whole collection is pre-tribal. Mostly involving small family groups of hunter-gatherers. It took a long time for religions to coalesce peoples into one group. .

[Eric Krewson]

I was a grave robbing, trespassing relic hunter in my youth. I haven't actively hunted artifacts since the 70s, back then we would ride up the Tennessee river in a boat stopping at all the shell mounds and bean fields to look for stuff. It never occurred to us were were trespassing on other peoples land without permission.

The laws changed, my attitude changed and I only pick up an occasional point I stumble across on public land now.

I even donated my best and only pot to a museum the other day as it was the last vestige of my grave robbing youth. Their collections were short on Woodland pots and I had one, now they have one prominently displayed in their exhibit.

I know and have known a lot of relic hunters and have never met one who let property lines or laws stop them from searching, I choose to be different.

[Etter]

Bout to go chase some right now. We have had some solid rains the last couple weeks. Might have uncovered something new