Why So Many Arrowheads (Ohio River)

welcome back we're down here at the Ohio River today and we're going to be searching for ancient artifacts and I'm going to explain how these artifacts are getting here and where they're coming from and also how we're able to find so many artifacts down here on these beaches of the Ohio River and we got the full battle rattle today we brought the sifter we brought the shovel and we even brought the scooper sifter here in uh places that we can use it where the sand isn't quite so deep and if you're seeing this video right now then we did well so stay with us so I'm going to take my shovel and I'm gonna clear some of this mud out of here in this water so I can get my sifter in and then we'll get started and uh we'll try to learn something today so stay with me it's going to be a lot of fun so what we're going to do is we're going to take our shovel and we're going to start sifting through this sand down to the hard packed clay layer because that's where everything likes to lay down under the sand we'll start down here close to the water that's where most the concentrates usually are at and then uh we'll work our way up towards the uh scooper sifter and the dock up there [Music] I started digging right here but that barge went by and the water filled in my hole so it's going to be just digging blind under this water right here but there's a lot of stone under here but look at this I dug a sample hole right here and you can see the clay layer is down about 10 inches or so it's a good bit of sand it's a good bit of sand to take off of there but as we go up that beach it may get a little more shallow it'd just be a it may just be a deep place right here in the sand but there's a lot of stone under there we got the sifter filled up once already I'm going to shake it down load it up again shake it down and then we'll check and see if there's anything in there foreign sand off the top of here this eight or ten inches you start hitting the gravel laying down on that packed layer oh that sounds good a lot of gravel in there okay you can see in just that little amount of dirt that we worked right there now we filled the sifter two or three times but look at the stone that's underneath of this sand and here's a good way to tell when you're on a good native site you see these uh pieces of cracked up Sandstone they're all red and fired well they're red like that because they've been fired around a campfire or uh maybe they were a part of a kiln or something just let me show you hold on a second okay we're over here at my neighbor's house and once in a while him and his buddies they sit around the fire pit here tell Nam stories but I want to show you something do you see how he's got these uh sandstones stacked up here well after repeated firing like I was showing you there at the river look at these Stones now you see how they're starting to turn red well after repeated firing over and over and over these stones will stay red forever and that's what we're seeing down there at the river and that's a good example right there okay we're back I see one down in this screen I don't know if it's whole or not but I see the tip of maybe an arrowhead or a dart point in here check this out and see if you see it you see that right there sticking out from under that rock let's pull that out see what it is oh it's all there oh that's real nice it's a hunting projectile point you can see it's made on a flake on the back it's completely flat on the back and they only had to work one side of it to get it worked down it's small enough it looks like it could be a bow and arrow tip we'll keep our fines right here in our case that's one for today nice let's look through this some more because that one was kind of laying right out where we saw it immediately I like to throw all these large stones way out there so you're not sifting again in the future check through this stuff well because some of these artifacts are really small there's some glass watch you don't get cut and you'll find a lot of these too Flint flakes where they were making artifacts Flint artifacts and projectile points that's the debutage the waste that they chipped off lots of flakes in here oh we got another one here hold on looks broken well it's uh it suffered some damage but it's made out of nice material looks like it would have been maybe a Jack's Reef seeing how thin it is and when I say Jack's Reef I mean that's the name of the point that modern man has given them probably 1500 years old they say that uh the Jax Reef was the first bow and arrow point that's why they're so thin well I'm not seeing anything else in this one there's a large piece of flint they were probably uh knocking spalls off of that to make tools or projectile points foreign let's loaded up again that was pretty fun there's a railroad tie under here I bet that thing's got a lot of stone packed in behind it float all those leaves and sticks off of there we got something in here I can see it right there I haven't even gone through it yet I can see part of it look right down in here can you see that I can see part of it let's hope it's all there oh yes look at this it's another Jack's Reef Point probably 1200 to 1500 years old and a lot of these will take on like a pentagonal shape as you can see that one Edge is uh kind of angled like that these age from around 1200 to 1500 years old and they say that's the first bow and arrow point that was made before this everything was thrown on a spear or a dart and the points were a lot heavier but when they got the bow and arrow they needed something lighter so their first option they thought well we'll just make them thinner well that worked pretty well I would say but eventually they got smaller and smaller and then just ended up with a triangle points that weren't even notched for the bow and arrow oh we're doing well we're doing well well let's look through the rest of this one and then I'll explain to you how these artifacts are getting down here onto this beach oh there's one here's one can you see it right there looks like it's got a tip fracture this is a bow and arrow tip this would have been the last projectile tips made by Native Americans before the Europeans showed up with metal now although the tip is broken off of that you can see just how thin it was you could make these off of just a flake of Flint if you had to very simple design very uh effective bow and arrow tip the most modern one I'm not seeing anything else in this one just some Flint pieces let me just go over how all these artifacts are getting down here on this beach now I know it's hard to see because all these weeds growing up here but behind me this is what we're looking at before the hydro dams were put in the water used to be way out there but now it's like a big full Lake all the time and before these dams were put in the land was flat on the top like this and then went gradually down to the water below down here now when the dams were put in it raised the water now it's just like a big lake and every time it floods it just lays up here on this Earth and softens it up and combined with the waves and everything all this land up here has been cut in half like this every time it floods it takes a little bit more off of this flat land up above where the natives were living and all the artifacts are laying under the dirt here that got covered up over thousands of years or hundreds of years and now up here on the top right in this area is this area right here now this is flatland where natives live for probably 13 14 000 years and you can see what I'm talking about right over here foreign this is The Edge where it's just cut straight down and everything under my feet right here along this Edge will be going down onto that River Bank within a couple years or so maybe sooner depending on how many floods we have but you can see right here how this is just cut straight down and everything in this dirt right here that's getting washed right down onto the beach where we're finding it and it's concentrated that's a lot of Earth to wash away down the river and leave all these artifacts behind right here we would have been standing under about 10 or 12 feet of dirt back in that time every winter we get those floods it washes those artifacts down a little more and a little more until they get right here on the water's edge there's nothing to bring them any farther because that's as low as the water goes and they'll sit there and wash back and forth right there at the water's edge and I can tell this because I'm getting a lot of gravel right in this area but the farther I go up that way it's getting a little thin so I think I'm just going to work my way down the beach under this pipe here right on the water's edge where most of the concentrates are at give us a better chance to find more stuff let's get back to digging foreign this place is loaded I got two more in here look here here's a nice one right here let me get you in the Sun so you can see it better here we go look right here looks all there it is oh that's a nice one look at that it's all there complete point might be a sharp and down Hopewell but look right down in here is another one can you see it right there it's white oh nice it also looks like a Hopewell Point re-sharpened very nice piece now I know that a lot of y'all are wondering how I know the age and the uh culture that these points come from I study this stuff a lot and these points were found with known items that were able to be carbon dated you can't carbon date a stone it's just too old carbon dating only goes back I think like 60 000 years or something like that and this here is the book that I use the Overstreet Indian arrowheads identification and price guide it's a very good book it breaks down all the regions in here and gives several different examples of each point in different stages of resharpening and you can see here our Jax Reef Point would fall right into this category you can even see the uh pentagonal side on that one on that left side of it but this is what this is Jack's Reef Corner Notch point and it gives the date Lake Woodland to Mississippian 1500 to a thousand years before present and I think they're calling present day like 1952 is the date they're going by there oh yeah we're getting a good collection here and I think these two are Hopewell points how sifting this down look what we got in here oh here he is it's a little leatherback turtle take off buddy there he goes oh man he stinks man y'all ain't gonna believe this I almost didn't see this because I was digging down into the clay look at this can you see that it's just sticking up right there the same colors that uh clay let's pull it up oh I think it's a double notcher I thought it had a double notch on it but it doesn't that's just some uh minor chipping out on the edges of it there that's a nice one look at that like a cream color that's a hard ID right there I can't match it up with anything in the book uh basically probably they don't have an example sharpened this way I don't know that's a hard call on that nice one there another nice one and a lot of guys seem to think that in this Overstreet book that they only put the best examples in there I know one guy that goes on there and brags well I got better ones in this one well that's not what they're shooting at they're shooting to show you the different styles of resharpening because they weren't all resharpened the same and once a point gets sharpened down so far the characteristics start going away in it and it's really hard to tell what it is I know I just said this but uh y'all ain't gonna believe this where I was shoveling before I just happened to look down look at this right here where I was shoveling a couple hours ago look right there there is a base sticking out right here let's pull it out oh I think it's all there yeah looks like an Adena point maybe 2 000 years old very nice and you see how it's got this favored curve on this one side as opposed to the other one I think this was a little knife blade you can clearly see that they've favored that one side over the other to give it that kind of a knife curve there Adena knife blade probably two thousand years old sweet we got another one down in here but it's broken you can see it right there it's made out of Flint Ridge from Ohio pink and white butt busted off right here on the back this would be an old break right here this was broken in ancient times a way you can tell on this there's a couple of ways you can tell look at the broken part and then look at the side of it if the broken part is a lot lighter color well then it doesn't have the age to it that the patina has built on the outside that that means it's broken recently also you can tell by if you feel the edges of the brake if they're really really sharp it was probably broken recently but if they're kind of not so sharp and dulled off probably an old break and this one here has a small fossil inside is what caused it to break on there I would say that it was just laying under the ground and against another stone or something and just the freezing and thawing before it was below the frost line probably snapped it now the other half's probably laying around here somewhere but uh odds of finding it very slim very slim I don't see anything else in this one Little T not Gary Busey no that was Gary Busey nah Gary Busey it was no it wasn't I'm digging down here in the water because uh there seems to be a lot more Stone gathered right on this Water's Edge like I said so I'm just going to stay in the water right through here because that's where I'm getting most stuff y'all ain't gonna believe this we got another Jax Reef it looks like look down in here ah look can you see it it's just here oh sweet it's another Jax Reef Corner Notch I think it's got a little popped out place right there like it was in a fire or a freeze popped or something just a little damage off the bottom of that base that's really nice another Jack's Reef see how thin it is hey we're on the Jax reefs today maybe there was a whole pouch of them lost there I don't know another Dandy go over there and look for that bucket we could use that I am I am now these points a lot of people think well they shot him on a bow or a dart and they lost them how could they lose that many arrows or darts well that's not the case you know I would say 99 of this stuff was just things that were misplaced around the house I mean how many times have you dropped something in your grass and you couldn't find it and you never did find it well a couple years later it's under this much dirt and leaves thousand years later it's under a foot of dirt and it's hard to tell up on that flat how many villages arose and then just died out over time probably a lot of people lived there I would say it had countless citizens over thousands of years had to have as much stuff as we find down here let's get back at it oh we got one in the scooper sifter look down in here can you see it let me set this down right down in there it's just there there's a fishing weight a sinker look at this oh nice again I think this is a little used up knife blade see how it favors that one side how it's curved like that they've just used that up to nothing and I mean uh once that's in the handle halved it in the handle and glued in there they don't want to take that out they're going to use it until it's this big before they replace it with a new one you ever use an X-Acto Knife I mean the blades on those aren't very big but they're very handy nice piece that's a whole little collection right there mostly Jack's Reef stuff and a sinker we're drying up we went three screens with nothing let's check this one here's a brick Flint oh there we go there we go hold on what is this looks like a little knife blade of sort it's not broken it's worked all around just a little uh used up knife blade again a lot of knives found a lot of knives I don't see anything else in there just uh bunch of flakes Flint everywhere in here well we moved a lot of sand out of here today and found some nice artifacts we're going to go ahead and get out of here and uh we'll catch you next time I still say that was Gary Busey anyway it was Nick Nolte yo come back now

Channel: Clegg’s Adventures

Views: 1,194,861

Keywords:

Id: eV-4L-hZ0Ds

Length: 26min 32sec (1592 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 19 2023