2 posts tagged “chert flakes”

Ruby pano 2

We had a good day today.  We covered part of the line that we weren't able to access before, which was a good hard hike, but then we did a bunch of road scouting and we got up to this ridgetop, where we could look down on everything.

But I thought I'd show you some of the artifacts we've collected recently too.  I know that people like projectile points the best, so here are some of the points we have found recently:

Elko base frag

NSN frag

Most of the points we find are broken, and for a good reason.  Much of the time, when we find a lithic scatter (chipped stone lying around) we will find broken points nearby.  That's because someone took the broken point out of its hafting and re-used the arrow or spear shaft for a new point.  What we are seeing is the broken, old point and the flakes left behind from someone making a new point.  I think it's pretty cool.

You'll notice that both of these points are made from something other than obsidian -- we are in an area that's  between obsidian sources, but there are good chert sources nearby, so the majority of the tools are made from chert.  It comes in an amazing variety of colors and patterns:

DSCN0485

I found all of these colors within a 10 meter area on one site!  It's actually one of the most fascinating parts of this project -- seeing how the vegetation, the topography, and the toolstone changes as we move across the state.  Knowing where the obsidian and chert comes form can tell us about how people moved around, or who they traded with, since an obsidian projectile point that is found a long way from its source must have gotten there somehow.  We are also seeing a lot of what we simply call bifaces -- basically, they are roughly-shaped pieces of stone, projectile point "blanks" that were traded from place to place.  Someone would shape the chert into a large, thick oval and then trade it that way, so that the person who got the stone could make their favorite type of point from it later.  A lot of the time, these blanks break as they are being made into a point, so we tend to find broken bits of them in with the lithic scatters.  It's another clue to what people were doing at the places we now call sites.

Ruby pano 1

Rabbitbrush and sage

The weather is starting to become unstable, so we are beginning to feel that the end may be near.  We will still be out recording until there is too much snow for us to see what is on the ground, but that it starting to feel sooner rather than later.  November is probably the latest we can reasonably expect.  Even in the photo above, you can see the cumulus cloud starting to gather, preparing to toss a fine drizzle at us on our way home.

The picture above was from the end of the day today -- we had a several-mile stretch that was inaccessible by road, so we walked the line again, going from site to site and recording collections of 3-10 flakes.  The other team dropped us off in the morning, and we followed drainages and antelope trails down to the road when we were done.  The picture was taken while lying at the side of the road in a rare patch of (dry) grass, waiting for the other team to finish their work and come pick us up.

One site we recorded today was small, but it had beautiful chert for the flakes:

Flake closeup

 I pretty much love anything that's banded, striped, mottled, or multicolored.  My favorite roses are the two-toned ones, with a different color on the petal's edge, and I don't even really care what the color combination is.  So these striped and veined chert flakes just struck me as so much prettier than any single-color flake, I had to take a picture, even if they were pink.  Not to mention, I am always amazed at how plastic rock turns out to be, and any evidence of geological forces melting, bending, or re-shaping rock always gets me excited, as evidenced by a whole blog on a single flake of obsidian.  *laugh*

I did get an interesting shot of our former campsite while we were out working today:

Willow Creek Reservoir

That strip of blue surrounded by hills in the background is the reservoir, whose edge we camped on 2 months back.  I am still kicking myself for not bringing my camera that rotation, because despite all the hardships we experienced while there (no fresh, potable water, port-a-potties, no shade, no shrubs, tiny stickers carpeting the ground, dust everywhere) it was a gorgeous location.  The sun setting over the hills took my breath away every night, and stars blanketed the sky.  The orange flag in the center of the shot is one of our survey stakes, which marks where the proposed centerline is, or at least was at one point, since in some areas it has been rerouted.  We tend to get one at the crest of each ridge, if we're lucky, and we have followed them across the landscape for months now.  They are like old friends now, so I had to be sure I got it in the frame.  *smile*