Hit 50 field survey sites this season and found my first arrowhead at site 47

I've been digging through survey grids for about 4 months now, mostly just pottery sherds and lithic flakes. Was starting to think arrowheads were a myth in my area. Then at site 47, a field in southern Illinois, I spotted this tiny quartz point sticking out of a plow furrow. It's only about an inch long but it's clearly been knapped. Made me realize persistence really does pay off. Anybody else have a find that showed up way later than you expected?

2 comments

2 Comments

mila_harris19d ago

Wait, so you're telling me I've been staring at dirt for 4 months and the secret is just... keep staring at dirt? That's brutal. I'm at 30 sites in Missouri and all I've got is a rock that looks vaguely like a turtle if you squint real hard. Maybe I need to borrow some of your Illinois luck, because at this rate my grandkids are gonna inherit my pottery sherd collection.

jake63819d ago

Oh man, the "rock that looks like a turtle" got me. I was there for like two years in Iowa just finding stuff that looked almost like something. What finally cracked it for me was stopping at one spot I kept driving past. It was just this random field with a creek running through it, nothing special. I went there like six or seven times, just walking different lines after rains. One day I found a broken arrowhead half buried in a washed out bank. That got me looking harder and I started finding chips and flakes everywhere. Sometimes you gotta just pick one place and wear it out.