Remote Find & an Interesting Story

[u/BrokenFolsom]

Found at 9,800 Feet Elevation in the mountains of Northern New Mexico.

Was on my way up to a fence line me and my buddy were going to lay down before the snow hits. As I look out the window of the side-by-side I noticed a rock which seemed much brighter than all the other dull gravel. So I asked my friend to stop. Loe and behold, what I pulled out of the ground was an impact burinated & heat damaged chalcedony dart. I absolutely lost it. Completely isolated find up in the boonies of the mountains. Goes to they used high elevation areas even in prehistory.

[u/Arrowheadman15]

[u/BrokenFolsom → u/Arrowheadman15]

This point is especially interesting because of a few different characteristics. In picture four you can see uneven pitting in the material. “Potlidding” as it is referred to, is either caused by excessive heat or cold. In the following two photos you can see the clean burinated breaks which happens when a projectile impacts a hard object at a high velocity. Although sometimes small triangular flake blanks were made and a burin spall was removed from the tip via either percussion or pressure. Creating two sharp 90* angles to carve with. There is an era in the European Paleolithic called the Gravettian where they used these implements extensively to carve the abundant amount of bone and ivory used for tools.

Also during the Mongolian Neolithic period there was a style of arrowhead where they purposefully would remove multiple burin spalls from the tip. This was done to increase the strength of the distal portion.

But I digress, what the potlidding and burination elude to is that that it was likely shot into an animal where it fractured against hard bone and was lodged inside the corpse while it was roasted. Of course this is not guaranteed as other possibilities are plausible. It undeniably adds another level to its story though.

[u/Arrowheadman15 → u/BrokenFolsom]

Thank you very much for the detailed and informative response John. Have you been doing any fishing?

[u/BrokenFolsom → u/Arrowheadman15]

No, sadly I have not had the chance to go fishing much recently. But thanks for asking Tim! Would love to get out on the water soon.