Noel Justice adds another regional guide to his series of important reference works that survey, describe, and categorize the projectile point and cutting tools used in prehistory by Native American peoples. This volume addresses the region of California and the Great Basin. Written for archaeologists and amateur collectors alike, the book describes over 50 types of stone arrowhead and spear points according to period, culture, and region. With the knowledge of someone trained to fashion projectile points with techniques used by the Indians, Justice describes how the points were made, used, and re-sharpened. His detailed drawings illustrate the way the Indians shaped their tools, what styles were peculiar to which regions, and how the various types can best be identified. There are hundreds of drawings, organized by type cluster and other identifying characteristics. The book also includes distribution maps and color plates that will further aid the researcher or collector in identifying specific periods, cultures, and projectile types.
The American Southwest is the focus for this volume in Noel Justice's series of reference works that survey, describe, and categorize the projectile point and cutting tools used in prehistory by Native American peoples. Written for archaeologists and amateur collectors alike, the book describes over 50 types of stone arrowhead and spear points according to period, culture, and region. With the knowledge of someone trained to fashion projectile points with techniques used by the Indians, Justice describes how the points were made, used, and re-sharpened. His detailed drawings illustrate the way the Indians shaped their tools, what styles were peculiar to which regions, and how the various types can best be identified. There are hundreds of drawings, organized by type cluster and other identifying characteristics. The book also includes distribution maps and color plates that will further aid the researcher or collector in identifying specific periods, cultures, and projectile types.
This useful guide provides a key to identifying the various styles of points found along the Upper Mississippi River in the Driftless region stretching roughly from Dubuque, Iowa, to Red Wing, Minnesota, but framed within a somewhat larger area extending from the Rock Island Rapids at the modern Moline -- Rock Island area to the Falls of St. Anthony at Minneapolis -- St. Paul. In addition to drawings of each style, Robert Boszhardt provides other accepted names as well as names of related points, age, distribution, a description (including length and width), material, and references for each type. The guide is meant for the many avocational archaeologists who collect projectile points in the Upper Midwest and will be a useful reference tool for professional field archaeologists as well. Book jacket.
The Native American tribes of what is now the southeastern United States left intriguing relics of their ancient cultural life. Arrowheads, spear points, stone tools, and other artifacts are found in newly plowed fields, on hillsides after a fresh rain, or in washed-out creek beds. These are tangible clues to the anthropology of the Paleo-Indians, and the highly developed Mississippian peoples. This indispensable guide to identifying and understanding such finds is for conscientious amateur archeologists who make their discoveries in surface terrain. Many are eager to understand the culture that produced the artifact, what kind of people created it, how it was made, how old it is, and what its purpose was. Here is a handbook that seeks identification through the clues of cultural history. In discussing materials used, the process of manufacture, and the relationship between the artifacts and the environments, it reveals ancient discoveries to be not merely interesting trinkets but by-products from the once vital societies in areas that are now Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, the Carolinas, as well as in southeastern Texas, southern Missouri, southern Illinois, and southern Indiana. The text is documented by more than a hundred drawings in the actual size of the artifacts, as well as by a glossary of archeological terms and a helpful list of state and regional archeological societies.
Between paying the light bill and raising a family most people find it impossible to reach the level of expert artifact hunter, simply because they do not have the time to develop the initial knowledge base. Arrowhead hunting theory and technique found here will allow you to bypass these difficult first years, and operate with the knowledge base of an expert arrowhead hunter, within the time it takes you to read and understand this work.
A reconsideration of the seminal projectile point typology In the 1964 landmark publication The Formative Cultures of the Carolina Piedmont, Joffre Coe established a projectile point typology and chronology that, for the first time, allowed archaeologists to identify the relative age of a site or site deposit based on the point types recovered there. Consistent with the cultural-historical paradigm of the day, the “Coe axiom” stipulated that only one point type was produced at one moment in time in a particular location. Moreover, Coe identified periods of “cultural continuity” and “discontinuity” in the chronology based on perceived similarities and differences in point styles through time. In Time, Typology, and Point Traditions in North Carolina Archaeology: Formative Cultures Reconsidered, I. Randolph Daniel Jr. reevaluates the Coe typology and sequence, analyzing their strengths and weaknesses. Daniel reviews the history of the projectile point type concept in the Southeast and revisits both Coe’s axiom and his notions regarding cultural continuity and change based on point types. In addition, Daniel updates Coe’s typology by clarifying or revising existing types and including types unrecognized in Coe’s monograph. Daniel also adopts a practice-centered approach to interpreting types and organizes them into several technological traditions that trace ancestral- descendent communities of practice that relate to our current understanding of North Carolina prehistory. Appealing to professional and avocational archaeologists, Daniel provides ample illustrations of points in the book as well as color versions on a dedicated website. Daniel dedicates a final chapter to a discussion of the ethical issues related to professional archaeologists using private artifact collections. He calls for greater collaboration between professional and avocational communities, noting the scientific value of some private collections.