Rocks... who is finding some?

[Johnboy114]

My first ever time to find anything. Sure wish it was closer to the house. This was after walking for about 25 minutes. Was a field next to a creek. There was a ton of broken pieces. Guessing where they made them. Hey tica why do you suspect you find em in creek beds?

[gator]

This is actually a cooler rock than the angle shows...Lila was super-excited to find her first "rock".

gator

[southernvaughan]

I'm digging this thread. If I could find a creek here in Rankin County, I'd love to take a walk. Hell, I'd just like to find a gravel road for a Sunday drive.

I'm game! They just clearcut a place that used to be fields years ago near my neigborhood on Trickambridge may could find some points there.

[tica-tica]

My first ever time to find anything. Sure wish it was closer to the house. This was after walking for about 25 minutes. Was a field next to a creek. There was a ton of broken pieces. Guessing where they made them. Hey tica why do you suspect you find em in creek beds?

A couple nice tools and scrappers you found. If you are seeing tons of chips and large size chunks of flint/chert, you are standing in their workshop. They often made the stone tools off to the side of their home site. You don't want sharp flakes all over the ground where you live so they would do the large amount of flint knapping work off to one side of the village or home site. Don't just concentrate your effort looking for points where you see tons of flake debris. Walk a range away from the workshop but still on the high ground, and look for tiny flakes on the ground. The tiny flakes are removed when they resharpen the finished points. This usually happened right on the site were they lived and will often give up the nice points.

I guess there are a number of reasons why you find them in creek beds but the main one is water erosion washing them out. Look for high bank creeks and flint debris in the creeks. High ground near fresh water source is always a good spot. Bends in creeks are good spots because they collect the gravel beds and that is where the points collect to.

[tica-tica]

This is actually a cooler rock than the angle shows...Lila was super-excited to find her first "rock".

gator

That is what it is all about right there.

My girls use to hunt rocks with me. Now they hunt boys and won't go with me.

[gator]

This is actually a cooler rock than the angle shows...Lila was super-excited to find her first "rock".

gator

That is what it is all about right there.

My girls use to hunt rocks with me. Now they hunt boys and won't go with me.

ugh.......i'm already dreading that, man.

awesome thread by the way, gator

[tica-tica]

Just to kick start the thread again, here are some great youtube videos of other arrowhead hunters around the states:

Over in the great basin in California:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrUaIzP ... &index=207

Missouri:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMjKkY3 ... h45b9x---Q

Digging a cache of arrowheads:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1KuDLCDVWA

[sab316]

Well my grandad wants me to come scrap some dirt from around his driveway with the skid steer, because he's tired of mud getting on his driveway when it rains. When he was explaining the spot to me my dad was standing there with him and said "Isn't that right where that sassafras tree was?" and my grandad, grandma, and dad all agreed thats about where it was.

Dad said it was triple trunked and big enough for him to get on the inside of it and play as a kid and said he remembers digging up a few arrow heads in the middle of the trees. So I'm going to keep my eye out when I scrap it off for him and maybe I'll get lucky and find something.

Guy right around the corner from my grandparents is clearing off a bunch of tree lines for his fields and has piles of dirt everywhere. I may go poke around those too.

[tica-tica]

Well my grandad wants me to come scrap some dirt from around his driveway with the skid steer, because he's tired of mud getting on his driveway when it rains. When he was explaining the spot to me my dad was standing there with him and said "Isn't that right where that sassafras tree was?" and my grandad, grandma, and dad all agreed thats about where it was.

Dad said it was triple trunked and big enough for him to get on the inside of it and play as a kid and said he remembers digging up a few arrow heads in the middle of the trees. So I'm going to keep my eye out when I scrap it off for him and maybe I'll get lucky and find something.

Guy right around the corner from my grandparents is clearing off a bunch of tree lines for his fields and has piles of dirt everywhere. I may go poke around those too.

That sounds like a good idea. I know those that dig for artifacts often look for old growth trees on the high spots near old water source because obviously old trees mean the ground has never been under plow and could hold complete artifacts. They will often dig small deep test holes to look for flint chips and/or features in the dirt IDing the site and best places to dig. Some also dig rock overhangs from the drip line on back into the dry space/cave and find a bunch of artifacts.

I would say most times, when somebody stumbles across an isolated find arrowhead, it is really not isolated at all. There are probably chips and other artifacts near where they found the arrowhead and they don't mark they spot and continue looking for more. I often wonder how many are under the ground I'm finding arrowheads on. Wonder how deep in the ground they are and which year will they be uncovered by the plow so I can find them.

[sab316]

There isn't just a ton of rocky outcroppings around us that I can think of. Just a few pieces (like as big as a truck) on the side of the highways out in the county. I'm not sure how accurate Google Earth is, but I was looking at the elevation difference between my grandparents house and the river. They are 32 feet higher than the land around the river. Their house was sitting at 254 and the river was around 222ish, but moving through the trees around the river I found a spot that steadily jumped all the way to 275, that is a stones throw away from the river and has been Corp of Engineer land for as long as anyone can remember.

Also are any creeks good to look in? There are some in my area, and a few that run through my parents place, but seems like they aren't "old enough". There is one on the east side of town that I want to walk when the water goes down, its what the town is named after when the first settlers bought it from the Indians, they named it from the creek.

When looked through Google Earth and using the time feature, I forgot they had straightened a creek and dredged it. Changing its course significantly, I'm guessing I could find the old creek bed, and that probably wouldn't be a bad spot either right?

[Dux Be Us]

Steep banked creeks are GREAT places to look...shovel and sifter might help you find fossils, civil war relics, and native stuff...get after em

What county are ya in?

[tica-tica]

There isn't just a ton of rocky outcroppings around us that I can think of. Just a few pieces (like as big as a truck) on the side of the highways out in the county. I'm not sure how accurate Google Earth is, but I was looking at the elevation difference between my grandparents house and the river. They are 32 feet higher than the land around the river. Their house was sitting at 254 and the river was around 222ish, but moving through the trees around the river I found a spot that steadily jumped all the way to 275, that is a stones throw away from the river and has been Corp of Engineer land for as long as anyone can remember.

Also are any creeks good to look in? There are some in my area, and a few that run through my parents place, but seems like they aren't "old enough". There is one on the east side of town that I want to walk when the water goes down, its what the town is named after when the first settlers bought it from the Indians, they named it from the creek.

When looked through Google Earth and using the time feature, I forgot they had straightened a creek and dredged it. Changing its course significantly, I'm guessing I could find the old creek bed, and that probably wouldn't be a bad spot either right?

If there are few sites in the immediate area to gather lithics for tool making you can bet they traded or carried the material in for tool making often from long distances away. I have found points made of tallahatta quartzite in North Alabama. This material does not occur naturally here in North Alabama. It is found in south Mississippi and Alabama and was traded and/or used by ancient people that traveled here to hunt, fight, whatever.. I have heard of obsidian points being found on the Tennessee river and analysis showed that the origin of the obsidian was from near the Napa Valley in California. When material for tool making is scarce, you will often find 'exhausted' artifacts (tools used up and resharpened many times to get the most use they could out of a tool). You might also find points that conserve the material during resharpening better like 'beveling' a blade edge instead of sharpening both edges of a blade. Where material is plentiful, you might find more broken points that are simply discarded for a new point. No sense in a lot of rework when you can just put a new point on and keep going. It all makes sense if you just think about the resources they had (or didn't have) and how you might behave yourself, trying to survive.

You can dig test holes in the high spots nears the creeks and sift for chips/artifacts. High chance those high spots will be sites. I don't dig for artifacts. Seems like a lot of work but many do dig and find amazing stuff. Must have permission and not be on government property to hunt for artifacts.

No not all creeks are productive. Creeks do change paths over time. I like to hunt creeks near cultivated fields where I have found artifacts. Creeks/Rivers are all you have when there is no plowed ground or when the crops get to high to hunt. Some creeks are void of artifacts for a long way and only a certain few stretches give up artifacts. It just takes time to figure out and remember the best spots in the creek. I have one creek I hunt that I only hunt one small area in. It is the place where everything seems to collect in and if there is going to be a point it will be in this spot. High bank creeks are best because they wash out the dirt banks and the points. The creeks that flow thru low areas just don't wash as much stone out and the areas are not where they wanted to live anyway because the low areas flood camps.

[sab316]

There are a few deep creeks around my parents place where you can see the soil change layers in the creek banks. Everything is so high right now because the lakes are high, its impossible to walk them though.

To the other person asking I'm in Tate County, MS. Far NW corner.

[Dux Be Us]

Im in Desoto...the wife and I have been going over to Frankstown, north of Tupelo, to find fossils. Last trip we found 155 shark teeth and bunch of " others". Found some chips but no complete points. I know a collecter in the area that finds some awsome point on private proprty. If fossils are your thing....google Frankstown Fossil Park. Civil war relics are found in the area as well...Prentiss County. Around here most folks walk plowed feilds...ALOT of Mound Builders, so, most stuff was found years ago when railroads came through. Gravel bars on the big muddy produce at times of low water levels as well

[Hole Hunter]

I stumbled upon this one the last Wednesday of Turkey season. I was walking a fire break just up from a creek and she was lying on the ground like someone set it there 5 mins before I walked up.


This is the first point we have ever found on our property, which encourages me that there maybe be more...