Colorado Folsom Point in the Shadows on the Trail Pentalogy

Figure One - Side B of 1.3 inch long Colorado Folsom projectile point. Do you notice
anything odd about the flute? John Bradford Branney Collection. 

Folsom artifacts have fascinated me for most of my life. I remember getting the iconic book Indian Artifacts by Virgil Russell for Christmas in the 1960s and seeing some of the magnificent Folsom points in Russell's collection. Ever since that time, I have been hooked on everything about the mysterious Folsom Paleoindian culture. What I discovered was that they don't call it the mysterious Folsom Paleoindian culture for nothing. Beyond the artifacts we rarely find and a few archaeological writeups on Folsom campsites and kill sites, there is very little known about the people who made Folsom projectile points. That was one reason why I wrote my historical fiction book series about the Folsom Paleoindian culture titled the Shadows on the Trail Pentalogy. Feeling deprived after reading the scant information on Folsom, I let my imagination run wild. I wanted the Folsom Paleoindian culture to come alive on the pages of my books!   

Figure Two - The Shadows on the Trail Pentalogy book series where 
the Folsom Paleoindian culture comes alive!      

Figure one is a photograph of one of the Folsom projectile points in my extensive Folsom collection. Barbara Johnson surface found this Folsom projectile point on private land in the San Luis Valley of Colorado in 1958. Mrs. Johnson came from a long line of Colorado artifact hunters. Her parents were avid artifact collectors and her grandparents were Rosco Dennis Mutz and Norma Starr Mutz. The artifact community knew Rosco Dennis as Dennis or R.D. Mutz. Mr. Mutz and his family collected one of Colorado’s premier artifact collections at the time. R.D. Mutz died in 1966 at Fowler, Colorado where he had been postmaster for several decades.

Figure Three - Cross-section of the Folsom projectile point 
in figure one, looking up from the proximal end.
Note how thin and flat this projectile point is.
Thinness was an all-important attribute
to Folsom flintknappers.  

The photograph in figure one is the Side B of the 1.3 inch-long Folsom projectile point made from what appears to be Black Forest silicified wood from the Colorado Front Range. When the Paleoindian flint knapper made this particular fluted projectile point, he or she did not follow the usual Folsom flintknapping process. Before I spill the beans on what the flintknapper did, I ask if you see anything unusual about the fluting on Side B of this projectile point? Look real close, now. 

Based on the morphology of this Folsom projectile point, I believe it began life as a thin, rectangular-shaped flake, not much longer than its current length. I am sure by now that a few of you noticed that the Folsom flintknapper fluted Side B from the distal end (tip) down toward the base and not from the proximal end (base) up as normally done. The fluting scar originates at the tip of the projectile point and stops prior to reaching the base. Another way to tell the direction of the fluting is to note the direction of the percussion ripple scars. They ripple like waves in the direction that the flintknapper drove the flute. In this case, the flute direction was from the distal end to the proximal end of the projectile point. This indicates that the flute striking platform was on the distal end of the flake. 

The Folsom flintknapper then created the point or tip by pressure flaking. He or she indented and thinned the proximal end with vertical pressure flakes and finished the marginal edges of the point with an extra-fine pressure retouch. Voila! The perfect Folsom projectile point.   

Figure Four  - Side A of the 1.3 inch long Colorado Folsom projectile point, showing
the original flake surface. John Bradford Branney Collection.  

Figure four is Side A of the same Colorado Folsom projectile point. In my opinion, Side A is the original surface from the flake. In other words, the Folsom flintknapper did not need to flute this side because it was already acceptably flat. Without fluting, this projectile point met the Folsom criteria for thinness. Next, the Folsom flintknapper used fine pressure flaking around the perimeter and called the projectile point good. This Folsom projectile point is < 2 millimeters thick within the flute channel. Folsom projectile points did not get much thinner than this.

An ethical artifact collector always documents his or her finds so the detailed provenance information can be passed down from generation to generation. One of the high points of this Folsom projectile point is the documentation done by the artifact finder, Barbara D. Johnson. This was one of the main reasons I acquired this projectile point for my collection. She wrote and notarized a legal affidavit explaining her family background and where she found the Folsom projectile point, ensuring me that it came from private property. 

This Folsom projectile point also has two legitimate Certificates of Authenticity (COA). Note that I wrote legitimate Certificates of Authenticity. There are a lot of illegitimate artifact authenticators and bogus Certificates of Authenticity in our hobby, and only a few legitimate ones. In my opinion, most authenticators don't know their thumbs from their big toes when it comes to artifacts, especially in the High Plains region. A word to the wise; just because an artifact has a Certificate of Authenticity does not make the artifact authentic! There are lots of fake artifacts out there with illegitimate Certificates of Authenticity (COA)!   

This Folsom projectile point came with two fine and legitimate Certificates of Authenticity;  the first COA came from Jeb Taylor and the second COA came from Bob Knowlton. Both men know their artifacts in the High Plains region. In his COA, Jeb stated that the Folsom point was “made on a flake where the original dorsal and ventral surfaces were utilized as flutes. This point was probably not much large than it is now.” On the second COA, authenticator Bob Knowlton wrote, “An interesting Folsom as it was made on a flake and must have been too thin to flute from the bottom, so it was fluted from the tip on Side B – then cleaned and basally thinned from the bottom. It has had one resharpening."

What are my conclusions? First, not all Folsom projectile points were created equally or using the same method. This particular Folsom projectile point was crafted on a flake and fluted from a direction not expected. Second, sometimes we think we know what is going on with a particular artifact until different eyes have a look and see things we never even imagined. 

John Bradford Branney holds a geology degree from the University of Wyoming and an MBA from the University of Colorado. He held various positions in the energy industry during his thirty-four-year career before he took up writing full-time. John has published eleven books and many magazine articles on prehistoric America and life in general. John lives in the Colorado mountains with his wife, Theresa, three German Shepherds, and an ex-feral cat.