Mission, you say that the d8 is pushing the artifacts up..how deep are they? This might be the coolest thread ever on aldeer. i've come across a few arrah heads thru the years. But to stand, obviously, where a village was hundreds of years ago and to hold the objects those folks worked with, made and used...that is totally awsome!
gman, I'm very happy you have enjoyed the thread. Thanks for the kind words...and I feel the way you described when finding these items on my land. They were the original inhabitants of this land. Thank you !
The cat scraped the topsoil on average about 8" deep. The hilltop is (was) a very fallow, flat-top field which grew fine crops. Some small high spots were scraped down deeper for leveling-out and penetrated into the greyish subsoil (about 3" thick average); and often slightly into the red clay. I'd say this added another 3-plus inches of depth...or a total of approximately 11." Most of the items must have been unearthed from 7" - 9"...maybe 10" deep....called the "Archaic Level.' A few older Late Paleo items (eg., Dalton Chattahoochie point or the yellow patina flake knife) found in a smaller, specific area facing north by west, were the deepest artifacts. They were laying exposed atop the red clay...probably (originally) 12" down.
I'm still hunting 2 items on my place since 1968: 1) a crystal point which a particular ancient Native American knapper made. I've found one broken crystal quartz point (a Greenbrier base) and lots of crystal sherds/flakes from this ancient master's work places...but no intact point thus far. This man's points are perfectly clear as glass. 2) A Clovis fluted point. They probably predate the time of habitation of the oldest site here by 1-thousand years. I think I found 2 smaller 'non-fluted' Clovis points made of quartz but haven't had confirmation. I'm hopping for an isolated find; one either dropped and lost during a hunt, or, one stuck into a deer which got away.
