Quandry #1

I found this stone tool in early January of 2010, on the shore of a lake, in my area. I was walking along, going out to take some photos of an esker in the woods and not really even looking for anything, when something caught my eye. I was 10 yards from the water, on sand, near the high water mark and it was a peice of white quartz that turned out to be nothing. But as I was bent down I saw this peice. At first, even when it was in my hand I thought it was a peice of lanolium or something that had broken apart and washed up on shore.

So that’s the story behind finding it, who knows what the story of it’s life was? It seems to have heavy use which would make me think it was important to someone. Maybe it was a favorite knife? It is made of a blue-ish/black felsite with yellow/orange chrystals, or phenochrysts, I belive they are called. It is nice and glossy, like it has been polished almost, and perhaps the morphology of being on the lake shore helped in this. Imagine the animals this may have prepared, or the reeds for dwellings it may have cut? It has a nice feel in the hand, and you can tell that the person who made it knew what they were doing to get such a nice edge on a thin peice of stone.

My theory is that it was once a more uniform (this theory is supported in a more recent post), maybe symetrical blade, which over time and thru use was dulled and resharpened. This process may have formed the point, which appears a lot like a graver edge. It seems that the blade on the left is a more fine edge than the one on the right, in the lower right photo. Looking at the lower right photo, the lower right corner of the tool has a small channel and ridge that lends itself to being held between the thumb and forefinger of the right hand, which would also account for the most heavy wear being on the blade opposite this “handle”.

It honestly strikes me as a kind of multi-tool. A scraper, knife, graver?

I don’t know how old it is. It is hard to say because the lake was damed by colonists in the 1720’s, and I do not know the original shape of the lake, though I have tried to find it out. It was most definitly washed out of the surrounding semi-upland when the lake level rose, after being dammed. I would like to hear any theories on age that people may have. Thank you.[edit: I believe the tool to be from the Archaic Period, which was about 8 - 3,000 years ago]

I have also been trying to find the lithic source, aka the quarry it was taken from. I visited the Robbins Museum in Middleboro, Ma, looking for tools that matched mine, but thru the thousands of points they have, I really didn’t see any that looked enough like mine to say it was the same stone. It is a fairly glossy/glassy felsite. Black at first impression, then shortly you notice a definite blue hue. The crystals are 1cm at largest, and are on the orange side of yellow.

There is a Brewerton Eared point, shown on the poster for 2009 archeology month for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, that appears to be made of the same material. The description says the point was found on Spectacle Island, in Boston Harbor. I have the poster in my pictures but I’m not sure about the copyrites, I’m sure you can find it easy on google image search.

Enjoy. Thank you for your interest and appreciation of Massachusetts history, and for practicing responsible collecting. All text original unless cited and cannot be reproduced. All photos cannot be reproduced without permission from me. I’m sure you understand. Take care!

This is the Beginning, Somewhere in the Middle

Hello!

My name is Andy, and I live near Boston, Ma. I’m very interested in the history and landscapes of this area. I love to explore the swamps, rock outcrops, woods, and strips of land behind the shopping mall. You know, the place called “Indian Rock”, or something like it, where all the kids go to drink! That place probably has some history to it, you know, and I think it’s fun to try and flush it out..

No, really. Ever since I was a little tyke, the colonial history of New England has interested me. I was born in Boston in 1981, and my parents would take my brother and I on sunrise trips to old forts and Revolutionary War battle-grounds, and Native American sites. We would explore cellar-holes in the woods, and camp along cold Vermont streams and Cape Cod beaches. These times spent exploring historical sites, on the East Coast, with my family, was what solidified my love for history.

When I was 10 or 11 years old, my folks bought me a handful of arrowheads that I was oogling, behind the glass of a junk shop in Vermont. The elderly lady who owned the place said they were from Vermont, and that when she was a little girl growing up, her family had a mortice, or corn grinding stone, out in the farm fields behind their house. It was a bowl shaped deppression in a boulder, where the local Native women, historically, would pound their dried corn with a stone or wood pestel to make flour, etc., and where she would sit in the sun as a little girl, probably in the 1930’s or 40’s. I just thought that was the best thing I’d ever heard! Right there behind the house!

I cherished those points my folks bought me (probably $15 in all), and I’d admire them all the time, imagining who the man was that made them, who used them, and how were they eventually lost in the brooks and woods of Vermont? And who was the relic hunter who found them again? Those points were why I would always have my head down, eyes searching the ground most everywhere I would walk, from a young age.

There was a pretty long period of time that I went neglecting the hunt. Years. This time, ironically, included the 5 years I spent living in Oregon; a place where some of the most beautifuly crafted stone tools in North America were made, and lost. Adding to the situation, I lived a short walk away from more than one sandy cobble creek. Perfect “hunting”. If only I had known then what I know now

I moved back to the Northeast in 2005, met a great girl and got a job working in an urban park, for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. This job, in resource protection and interpretation, really helped me to begin appreciating the history of the Boston area, and I have been delving deeper in these past 5 years than I ever had before. The little lady is my faithful hunting partner, (and somehow she puts up with me constantly boring her with talk about potential campsites and lithic material). My focus has shifted further from colonial history, to pre-colonial, or Native American history. I guess you could say that instead of trying to understand the historic pattern of the area by going from the present day backwards (which is the direction I was going), I started trying to head from the beginning of human occupation in the area, forward.

I grew up near the Neponset River, and I consider the small valley to be my homeland. I am as connected to this place as anyone can be, I suppose. As John Hanscomb Mitchell would appreciate, I consider the people who lived, hunted, ate and died here, before me, spanning back almost 12,000 years, as my brothers and sisters in Ceremonial Time. We all grew out of this particular landscape, on this particular patch of ground, and share a common history of life hacked out of this latitude and longitude.

I am a collector of old things I find on the surface of the ground. Some of these artifacts include Civil War era munitions, marbles, glass shards and bottles, clay pipe fragments, buttons, and my favorite, indigenous Eastern Massachusetts stone tools. In the past two years, or so, I have been avidly researching Native occupation of this area, exploring known and possible sites on foot, photographing, and doing a little bit of what I hope is ethical surface hunting for projectile points. I’m most interested in points because of the artistic quality of them, and how much skill had to go into the creation of these very delicate, but rough and lethal, tools. The making of stone tools represented a large amount of the lives of the men of Native New England before the 1700’s. I like to think that the people who knapped these points would like to know people (thousands of years down the line) are still admiring their craftsmanship, and showing them around. They are the tools that kept food in the mouths of the village, and kept enemies or aggressors at bay. The few points and tools I have found I record, and will post here as a way to share these finds with the public, a public resource, if you will. I cherish these finds and plan to donate them, pass them on to another generation, or maybe return them to where I found them, down the line. For now I want to learn more about them.

I am by no means an expert on the timeline of this place. I am quite an amature, and this blog is something that I hope to use as a tool to learn more, and hopefully help you all to learn a little something I might have to offer (as little as that might be!). I like to bushwhack through the woods, study maps and areal photographs, read old histories, and especially talk to people about things they have encountered in their travles. I enjoy these activities because they put me in the outdoors, and it’s an act of discovery, even if it is personal discovery…..I am fascinated by the old railway lines that run forgotten through our towns, and the old “Indian Path” that passes through your woods to the 3 acres of flat, south facing ground, near where the cold brook enters the river. Many times these are the places that were once busy trade routes, hunting grounds, centers of local commerce and bustling village life, and now they are largely forgotten to most of us, who live next to them! Maybe they were set aside back when the memory and importance of the place was still fresh, but that memory has faded over the years. I want to polish that memory.

I will post some of my finds, and a little text about them, next. Forgive me if some of my details are vague, as I reserve the right to withhold information about private property or fragile cultural landscapes and locations.

Thanks for coming along!
andy 2/16/2010

New spot

Hello!

I started a journal on another page a couple of weeks ago. I am going to re-post my previous posts from my previous blog, on here, and post new ones. Thanks for taking the time to read about my adventures and hunts- this is mostly a way to show the artifacts I find while hunting the surface around Eastern Massachusetts. I will also try to weave a little related history into the posts.

Be well, and be responsible

andy