THE CREEPY FOREST - The Truth About Artifact Authentication and Fraud

 

The Creepy Forest

by John Bradford Branney

The Dangerous and Creepy Forest

My creepy tale has several animal characters in it, some good and some bad. The animal characters include wolves, sheep, pigs, owls, squawky birds, and busy bees. Before I begin my creepy story, let me first tell you why I wrote it.      

The hobby of prehistoric artifact collecting is under attack.

I am not referring to the federal government cracking down on our artifact hunting freedom, not this time anyway, and I am not referring to the threat to our hunting grounds from urban sprawl or land development, although, urban sprawl and land development do threaten many places where we hunt artifacts. The attack of our hobby is coming from a few unscrupulous characters who are knowingly selling modern artifacts as authentic prehistoric artifacts. These unscrupulous characters are defrauding the public and ruining our hobby. To add insult to injury, some of these unscrupulous characters are fellow artifact collectors.  

I challenge each of you to go to the website of the world’s largest auction company. You know the one. Type into its search engine Folsom point or Scottsbluff point or Clovis point or bannerstones or any other rare prehistoric artifact and see what pops up. How many of these “so-called artifacts” look authentic? On a good day, it might be fifty percent. Some misguided or dishonest sellers or Bad Wolves are peddling modern reproductions as authentic prehistoric artifacts to an unsuspecting public. These Bad Wolves are preying on the Sheep, uninformed, or trusting artifact collectors. These Bad Wolves are also taking advantage of the Pigs, greedy collectors who think they are buying high-end prehistoric artifacts at bargain-basement prices.    

Unfortunately, my creepy tale does not end with just Bad Wolves, Sheep, and Pigs. My story is much creepier than you can imagine. If you are a true prehistoric artifact collector, you probably already know where this story is heading, and it may disgust you as much as it does me.    

 

Figure One – When something looks too good to be true, it usually is. A 4.6-inch-long fake Angostura point reportedly found in Wyoming. Made from slab-cut Edwards Chert from Texas. Killed by authenticator Greg Perino. The artifact value is zero.

I am old enough to remember the days when artifact reproductions looked like artifact reproductions. Times have changed. Flintknapping has become extremely popular and there are some very talented flintknappers out there, creating reproductions by the bushel basket. These flintknapping virtuosos can fool almost anyone with their attention to detail and with their hard to detect, ingenious physical and chemical methods of applying fake patination to artifact reproductions. In my creepy forest, I will call these flint knapping virtuosos the Busy Bees since they knap flint as if it is going out of style. These Busy Bees pride themselves on the accuracy of their creations, diligently studying the knapping styles and technologies that prehistoric people used to create tools and weaponry. Then, the Busy Bees create realistic reproductions of Clovis points and Cody Complex points and Dovetails and many other types of prehistoric artifacts. The responsible Busy Bees indelibly mark and document their works of art to ensure that their reproductions do not end up in the greedy paws of the Bad Wolves. However, some of the artifact reproductions end up in the greedy paws of the Bad Wolves who then misrepresent them as authentic prehistoric artifacts. They might put an old tag on the artifact to make it look old and the stories...the Bad Wolf provides a story about some old granddad finding the artifact down by the creek to go along with his or her deception. The Bad Wolves knowingly commit fraud for the sole purpose of making money from gullible Sheep and greedy Pigs.  Not all Wolves, or artifact sellers, are crooked. In fact, most Wolves are honest, but a few renegade Bad Wolves spoil the entire forest. 

Figure Two – An Agate Basin reproduction sold as an authentic artifact from northern Wyoming. Flaking is wrong and the faker ground off the high spots with Dremel tool (circled).
This reproduction has never been to Wyoming. Killed by Greg Perino. Artifact value is zero.

Do I believe that the Bad Wolves know what they are doing when selling reproductions as authentic prehistoric artifacts? Yes. I believe that most of them should know or do know and do not care. I have contacted several of these Bad Wolves to give them my opinion on what they are doing. None of these Bad Wolves have ever responded to me with an explanation. A few have actually "blocked me' from ever contacting them again. My gut feel is most of them know exactly what they are doing! The real creepy part is that a few of these Bad Wolves are members of archaeological and collector associations, including G.I.R.S. Yes, our enemy is right in our midst. Of course, these Bad Wolves do not use their real names on the auction sites. They use clever little handles and change these handles routinely to keep one step ahead of the posse. Many experienced collectors know the names of these Bad Wolves, but do nothing to stop them, probably because fraud is much harder to prove than slander.   

It is time for me to introduce another animal to this creepy story. Just like there are both good and bad Wolves, there are also good and bad Busy Bees. I am going to call the bad Busy Bees, the Killer Bees. As previously mentioned, the responsible flintknappers are doing everything possible to prevent Bad Wolves from selling their reproductions as authentic prehistoric artifacts. On the other hand, the Killer Bees, or the crooked flintknappers, are like the Bad Wolves, they are only in it for the money. The Killer Bees care less about the health of the hive or the taste of the honey or the forest or the Sheep or the Pigs. The Killer Bees sell their recently knapped reproductions to the Bad Wolves and the Bad Wolves then peddle them to the Sheep and the Pigs. In this creepy partnership, the Killer Bees and the Bad Wolves steal lots of hard-earned money from the Sheep and Pigs. The Sheep and Pigs may ultimately wake up and realize that they have been fleeced or made into bacon, but by then it is too late to do anything about it. “Besides,” the Bad Wolves boast, “artifact authenticity is an opinion, and it is my opinion that artifact is authentic.” This is the get-out-of-jail-free card for all Bad Wolves! 

Figure Three – If it is too good to be true it usually is. Who would NOT want this beauty in their collection? However, it is a fake Goshen-Plainview point made from a thin slab of Edwards Chert and allegedly found in Wyoming. On the backside, the faker ground the high spots down with a Dremel, leaving rotary tool marks. Greg Perino killed this fake. Artifact value is zero.

The subject of artifact authenticity allows me the opportunity to introduce another animal to our forest, the Wise Owl, or the ethical artifact authenticator. For those of you unfamiliar with what an ethical artifact authenticator does, here is my definition; the ethical artifact authenticator supplies a buyer or seller an unbiased and well-thought-out opinion as to the authenticity and type of the alleged prehistoric artifact.    

Two or three decades ago there were very few Wise Owls in the forest. At that time, the Wise Owls had credibility. One of those Wise Owls was a man by the name of Gregory Perino. I shall call Mr. Perino the Wisest Ole Owl of the forest. Greg Perino had experience, knowledge, and most importantly, integrity. From near and far, Pigs and Sheep came to him for his opinion on artifacts. The Wisest Ole Owl was not too proud to admit when he did not have an answer. He sent me off to another artifact authenticator on more than one occasion. He killed and authenticated artifacts only if he had good reason to do so. That is called integrity. Mr. Perino died on July 4, 2005. The Sheep demanded that someone fill the void left behind by the Wisest Ole Owl. Birds of different feathers flocked to the forest, touting that they could fill the void left behind by the Wisest Ole Owl. Many of these Squawking Birds were all squawk and no action. They were not experienced, knowledgeable, experienced, and trusted. The Squawking Birds made a lot of noise, but none would ever match the Wisest Ole Owl. Most would never be more than loud and obnoxious Squawking Birds.

Squawking Birds and a handful of Owls inhabit today’s creepy forest. A few low-integrity Squawking Birds are more than happy to play along with the Bad Wolves' money-grubbing schemes. The Bad Wolves send their doctored-up, fake-story reproductions to the complicit Squawking Birds. A few Squawking Birds become entangled in the fraud against the artifact community but justify their actions by proclaiming “artifact authenticity is an opinion”. Squawking Birds do not protect the Sheep and the Pigs from the Bad Wolves. There are one or two Squawking Birds that actually work side-by-side with the Bad Wolves to fleece the Sheep and the Pigs, and knowledgeable collectors know who they are!

The forest is now a corrupt and creepy place to live.

Figure Four – Poor example of a high plains Scottsbluff point. Flaking is off and “Disneyland” material not right for the area. Dwain Rogers and Greg Perino killed this artifact. Artifact value is zero.

However, there is hope for the forest! Two more birds live in the forest. The first of these birds are the Eagles that fly straight and true. When Eagles see something wrong, they do something about it. Eagles stand tall over the trees of the forest and do not cower when facing Bad Wolves or Killer Bees or Squawking Birds. Eagles put fear in the hearts of these bad animals because Eagles do not tolerate dishonesty or corruption in the forest.  

Another bird of the forest is the Ostrich. Ostriches do not like conflict. When Ostriches see conflict, they skedaddle like the wind and hide until the trouble blows over. Ostriches declare it is none of their business what the Bad Wolves and others do. Ostriches stick their heads in the sand and hope everything will be better tomorrow.   

Which animal best describes you?       

When we can no longer tell the difference between a prehistoric artifact and a three-day-old reproduction, it is time to stick a fork in our hobby. We are at that point in time. On a weekly basis, The Bad Wolves are literally selling hundreds of reproductions as authentic prehistoric artifacts. Greedy or naïve buyers continue to pay hard-earned money to corrupt sellers for artifact reproductions. The corruption has reached epic proportions and it threatens ALL honest collectors and authentic collections.

What can WE do to save our hobby?  

1). Continual education. We are at the equivalency of an arms race. We find the fakes, and the scoundrels come up with a better way to fool us. Crack the books. Join a few artifact forums on social media and study and learn from knowledgeable and experienced collectors. Ask others who you can trust in our hobby as far as sellers and authenticators. Avoid the rest. 

2). There is no Santa Claus in artifact collecting. A big old billboard hangs above our hobby that reads “BUYERS BEWARE”. There is no regulation or oversight in our hobby. Unless you trust the seller, buying artifacts can be equivalent to jumping into a den of hungry wolves. Before you know it, the wolves have eaten through your pocketbook. They are not only selling expensive reproductions but also selling less expensive reproductions. These corrupt sellers do not care if they defraud you for fifty bucks or five thousand bucks, it is their nature to prey on the inexperienced and the greedy.  

3). If you are a flint knapper and sell your modern art on the open market, please document your work. Permanently mark or brand your modern art so a corrupt seller will at least have to work at defrauding the public. Photograph each piece with information on when you made it. Publish your flint knapping art on a website or social media site so collectors know what you have done, so if it does show up in the authentic market, there is supporting documentation of its origin.

 4). All certificates of authenticity are not equal. I can count on three fingers the authenticators I trust, and I still personally kick the tires on every one of my artifacts. Most certificates of authenticity are close to worthless. Just because an artifact comes with a certificate of authenticity does not mean it is authentic or valuable. Knowledgeable collectors KNOW who the dishonest and bad authenticators are, if you do not know, ask a knowledgeable collector who to use to authenticate BEFORE you spend the money on an artifact.

5). If a seller does not allow you enough time to have an artifact verified by an ethical authenticator, walk away. If a seller wants you to accept a certificate of authenticity from his authenticator, walk away. The only way to stop this rampant fraud is to starve these unscrupulous sellers out of existence!     

5). Even if you have a solid certificate of authenticity, learn to evaluate artifacts yourself. There are many good books on the subject. If you plan on buying artifacts, spend the money on a good microscope or magnifying loupe and study tons of authentic points under magnification. Know what to look for. It is your hard-earned money spent, not the authenticator’s money! Make sure YOU are 100% confident in the artifact.

6). If you are an ostrich and care about our hobby, pull your head out of the sand. Be proactive. Help us defend our hobby and our passion, just do not accept the status quo. Do something! Do anything! No action is condoning this activity! No action is what an Ostrich does!  

7). If you see blatant 'artifakes' on auction sites or websites, report them to the administrator of the site. I report many reproduction-as-authentic listings when I see them. If we do nothing to stop this nonsense, expect nothing to happen!   

I am sure there are one hundred more things that we must do to counterattack the assault on our hobby. The operative five words in my last sentence are things that we must do!

Final word?

I harmed no animals in the making of this story, except for damaging the animals’ reputation by comparing them to some awfully bad, dishonest humans. I do apologize to the animals for casting such a negative light on their species with this comparison.

About the Author 

John Bradford Branney is a Wyoming native living in the Colorado mountains. He has hunted prehistoric artifacts for over fifty years in Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, South and North Dakota, Utah, New Mexico, Montana, and Texas. Branney has written dozens of magazine articles and ten books on Prehistoric America and other aspects of life.   

Dinosaur Gastroliths - The Shining

 

The Secret of the Shining

By John Bradford Branney

 

Figure 1 – Prehistoric flintknapping station lying on the 150-million-year-old Morrison Formation in Central Wyoming. The author took this photograph on 8/11/2020.

You are going to find that my article’s topic is a little bit off the trail of typical prehistoric artifact musings but sometimes new trails are fun to follow. My story is about some super old pre-Clovis artifacts (or technically fossils) that I surface found in 2020 on a private ranch in central Wyoming.

In 2020, I artifact hunted fifty-plus days. I tend to hunt my proven sites too often. My hunting pressure on those sites outpaces Mother Nature’s ability to bring more artifacts to the surface through erosion. To relieve the pressure on my proven sites, I decided to spend more time on two large private ranches in central Wyoming where I had permission to hunt. These are “Wyoming-sized” ranches, so there was a lot of real estate to investigate. The first ranch I visited lies in a geologically active area. The ranch is a gorgeous hunk of land with colorful hogback ridges folded and twisted by geologic faults. Sage and shortgrass valleys separate the ridges from each other. For a geologist like me, it is a dream come true. I can walk through geologic time while finding prehistoric artifacts. Life cannot get any better than that!   

Figure 2 – Polished stone, surface found on

5/18/2020 at newly discovered prehistoric campsite.

On my first day of exploring the virgin territory along the ridges and swales of the ranch, I found a pocketful of chipping debris, crude flake tools, and a few broken projectile point pieces. It took a couple more uneventful trips like that before I discovered my first prehistoric campsite lying on clay soil along the slope of a shaly hogback ridge. I browsed the edges of the chipping debris and determined it was a relatively small campsite. So much for hoping for the next Lindenmeier site! I surface recovered a pocketful of chipping debris, scrapers, crude flake knives, and two nearly complete projectile points from the Late Archaic / Late Prehistoric timeframe. The most intriguing artifact I found was a highly polished stone made from chert that had no business being on that shaly slope or in that prehistoric campsite (figure 2). The stone was too smooth for river polish. Besides, there were no rivers, past or present, anywhere close to that ridge. My first thought was that a prehistoric inhabitant either polished the stone to a high sheen or he or she found it elsewhere and carried it back to the campsite. I believe that prehistoric people were a lot like us and that there had to be a rockhound or two in the crowd.  

When I arrived back home in Colorado and had a chance to study the chipping debris, I noticed that several flakes had highly polished surfaces on the cortex. I started asking myself questions about these odd, polished stones. The mystery was on, and I could not wait to return to that ridge in the next week or so.  

Figure 3 – It was not all polished stones. Perfect 3.3-inch-long Pelican Lake 

knife form surface found on 6/2/2020.  

I studied and rubbed that polished stone for several days. It had become my lucky charm around the house. I could not figure out why the prehistoric human had spent time polishing it to such an extreme finish. Polishing it to a high gloss served no functional purpose and it was too small to use as a mano or a burnishing stone. Grasping at straws, I concluded that just like I had adopted it as a lucky charm, so did some ancient camper on that prehistoric site.  

What about the chipping debris made from jasper and petrified wood and chert with remnants of the same highly polished surfaces? Where did the highly polished stones come from? The ridge was composed of shale, claystone, and mudstone with some interbedded limestone. I never once spotted an ancient river or glacial till deposit along any of the ridges or swales. Besides, I had never seen a river or glacier put a sparkle on a rock like that. It looked like it just came out of a rock tumbler at the local rock shop. Active rivers polish rocks, but they also bang them up. Eventually, I would learn the secret of the shining, but for now, I continue my story…  

Figure 4 – Perfect 1.0-inch-long Mummy Cave arrow point

found amongst the shaly rock on 5/6/2020.

The next time I visited that prehistoric campsite, I hiked up to the top of the ridge. The views from the ridgetop were fabulous. It was like a piece of heaven. The landscapes in every direction took my breath away! To top it off, I discovered a prehistoric flintknapping station with chipping debris and lightly worked artifacts littering the ground (figure 1). I not only found broken flakes but also several glossy mystery stones. The prehistoric flintknappers had sat on that ridge, taking in the views while breaking open the polished stones like eggs and making stone tools out of the pieces. I found something else that had my heart pitter-pattering; fragments and slivers of fossilized bone weathering out of the bedrock almost everywhere. Something happened along that ridgetop a long time before any prehistoric humans ever showed up and I needed to know what! 

Figure 5 – Polished stone found at flintknapping

station on 8/11/2020.

When I got home, I pulled up a map that showed me the surface exposures of geological formations along the ridges and swales I was investigating. I tied the geological map to the topographical map that I used to explore the area. I correlated the geological formations to each ridge and swale I had walked. From south to north, it went from Cretaceous-aged Niobrara, Mowry, Thermopolis, and Cloverly formations to the older Jurassic-aged Morrison Formation.

The ridgetop, flintknapping station and fossilized bone slivers and fragments lay on the mudstone and claystone of the pastel-colored Morrison Formation, the one-hundred-fifty-million-year-old Jurassic Park of dinosaur fossils. I had another clue in solving the mystery of the lustrous stones!

Figure 6 – Fossilized bone fragments eroding from the 150-million-year-old

Morrison Formation of Jurassic age near the flintknapping station. 

The author took the photo on 8/11/2020. 

Two paleontologists by the names of Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh brought notoriety to the American West during the Great Dinosaur Rush in the late 1800s. The ‘Bone Wars’, as scientists and book writers called them, highlighted the bitter and hostile rivalry between Cope and Marsh in their ‘anything goes’ competition for finding dinosaur bones and naming new dinosaur species. The two egotistical paleontologists resorted to such chicanery as bribery, slander, theft, and even the destruction of dinosaur bones to win the contest. The Bone Wars were not one of the most inspirational stories in paleontological history. It did make the Morrison Formation famous or perhaps infamous. It placed the dinosaur bone quarries at Como Bluff in Wyoming, Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado and Utah, and Morrison, Colorado on the map.

As I sat in my chair thinking about the shiny stones, a light bulb lit up over my head. It was the automatic timer on my lamp. Sorry, I thought we needed a bit of levity! Okay, back to the story…

The evidence for the origin of the glossy pebbles was falling into place; 1). I found polished stones amongst the tawny clays of the Morrison Formation. 2). Prehistoric humans used the mystery stones as a raw material source for making stone tools. 3). The shiny cobbles were completely out of geologic and archaeologic context, 4). Fossilized bone fragments were eroding to the surface of the one-hundred-fifty-million-year-old Morrison Formation.

I had the answer. I am sure some of you have already figured it out.

Figure 7 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=79140803

The glossy stones were dinosaur gizzard stones or gastroliths or as some people call them, Morrison stones. Some of you might be asking yourself why dinosaurs had gizzard stones? We know the turkey at Thanksgiving had a gizzard, but that gobbler was a far stretch from being a brontosaurus, genetically speaking. Some living species of animals have gizzard stones in their gastrointestinal tract to grind food because they lack suitable grinding teeth. Herbivorous birds, earthworms, alligators, crocodiles, and some fish species have gizzards. They eat rocks to help grind the food entering their gastrointestinal tracts. In some modern species, the gizzard stones stay in the muscular gizzard for a long time and become polished from stomach juices and grinding against other rocks, while in other species the stones pass through the intestines and the animal replaces them with more stones.  

Figure 8 – Curious pronghorns near the ridgetop, wondering what the crazy human is looking for.

The author captured this image on 9/30/2020.

In 1906, George Reber Wieland reported finding polished quartz pebbles or gastroliths within the skeleton of a dinosaur. Since then, many scientists believe that Sauropod dinosaurs, those fun-loving, extinct herbivores with long necks, tiny heads, and four thick, pillar-like legs had gizzards (figure 9). Researchers believe that one genera of sauropod called the brontosaurus weighed anywhere between fifteen and twenty-five tons. I can imagine it took a lot of plant material to satisfy the appetite of that husky twenty-five-ton vegetarian. As an analogy, a moo-cow weighing twelve hundred pounds eats around twenty-seven pounds of hay (plant material) per day according to the University of Nebraska at Lincoln (2013). I converted the twelve-hundred-pound cow’s daily consumption of plant material to an equivalent consumption needed for a twenty-five-ton sauropod. The analysis showed that a brontosaurus had to eat around eleven hundred twenty-five pounds of plant material per day to keep up with the cow’s consumption. That dinosaur was eating the equivalent weight of an entire cow in forage every day! Since sauropods had disproportionately small heads and weak dentition, they probably had trouble processing and digesting a half of a ton of forage every day. Gizzards in the sauropods’ gastrointestinal tracts loaded with abrasive rocks ground and processed their nutritional needs. Remember my reference to rock tumblers? Well, sauropods had rock tumblers in their guts! Who knows, the gastroliths might have stayed in the dinosaur’s gizzard for the life of the beast. No wonder they are so shiny!

Figure 9 – Dinosaur gastroliths from the Morrison Formation.

The pale green gastrolith in the upper left is 3.7 inches long.

The author took this photograph.

My conclusions are not without precedent. During the archaeological investigation at the Hanson site in northwestern Wyoming, George Frison and Bruce Bradley (1980: 99-101), found that the Folsom people used dinosaur gastroliths from the nearby Morrison Formation to make tools for cutting, scraping, and engraving. Some debitage and tools had the original polished surfaces of the gastroliths just like I found.

Wrap up the mystery of the shiny stones and tie it up with a pretty bow. I cannot wait until the snow melts and I can return to the north country for more fun in the Jurassic sun!

 

References cited.

1980    Frison, George C. and Bruce A. Bradley, Folsom Tools and Technology at the Hanson Site, Wyoming. University of New Mexico Press. Albuquerque.

2013    University of Nebraska at Lincoln, Determining How Much Forage a Beef Cow Consumes Each Day: UNL website.

1906    Wieland, G. R., Dinosaurian gastroliths: Science, v. 23, p. 819-821.

 

About the Author.

 

John Bradford Branney is a Wyoming native, an author, a geologist, a prehistorian, and an associate editor of Prehistoric AMERICAN. He has written ten books and many magazine articles on Prehistoric America and life in general. Branney is currently writing the fifth and final book in the prehistoric adventure series the SHADOWS on the TRAIL Pentalogy. He lives on forty acres in the northern Colorado mountains with his wife Theresa, three German Shepherds, and a feral cat. 

 

 

 

 

                                 

The Midland Point Mystery Along the Shadows on the Trail

 

Figure One - High Plains Midland Projectile points from the author's collection.
The longest point is 2.4 inches long. Photo by John Bradford Branney.  

Some people claim that Midland projectile points are unfluted Folsom projectile points while other people profess that Midland was its own archaeological complex, separate from the Folsom archaeological complex. The people with the latter opinion call attention to the Midland-only site named Winkler-1 discovered by amateur archaeologists in southeastern New Mexico (Blaine et al. 2017). There, artifact hunters surface collected Midland points from an active sand blowout. Perhaps, the Midland projectile points above in figure one started out as Folsom projectile point preforms and were too thin for the knappers to flute, or maybe the knapper was not skilled enough to flute a Folsom point, or perhaps Midland projectile points were deliberately made that way. We will never know for sure, at least until the next great discovery.

The Midland projectile point type is somewhat of a 'catchall' for several other types of projectile points. It is my experience that collectors and professionals alike tend to lump different types of indented Paleoindian projectile points under the Midland projectile point type umbrella. I have seen what I would call Goshen-Plainview, Allen, and even Cody Complex points categorized as Midland points. That does not make me right and those other people wrong. It just demonstrates the difficulty people have differentiating Midland projectile points from other thin, indented base Paleoindian projectile points. I have that same difficulty.  

Figure Two - The first historical fiction book in my five-book series titled
the Shadows on the Trail Pentalogy. Available at Amazon.com.   

Well-respected archaeologist Bruce Bradley (2010:475) provided one of the better definitions of the Midland projectile point. He described Midland flaking as wide and relatively shallow, producing projectile points with flat cross-sections. Bradley noted that pressure flaking was often used along the edges and the bases of Midland projectile points, but that for the most part, the Midland knapper did most of the flaking using percussion! He noted that Midland points showed abrupt and continuous marginal retouch along the edges which thinned and narrowed the Midland points enough to eliminate the negative bulbs produced from the percussion flaking process. 

Have you ever checked out the edgework on a well-made Midland point? Check out figure three! Wide and shallow flaking across the face of the projectile point with pressure flaked "mouse nibbling" around the circumference of the edges. In his analysis, Bradley concluded that Midland points were technologically distinct from Folsom points.

Figure Three - 1.8-inch-long Midland projectile point

surface found 9/2/1997 in Logan County, Colorado.

Note flaking and edgework. John Bradford Branney Photo.

Bradley made that last argument from a technical flintknapping perspective. He stated that Midland points were more than just unfluted Folsom points. He noted that there were two distinct technological differences between Folsom and Midland in the final shaping and thinning, and the marginal retouch. Bradley suggested that Goshen-Plainview points complicated Paleoindian projectile point identification due to several similarities in form and technology. Anyone who has attempted to differentiate between Midland and Goshen-Plainview points can vouch for Bradley's opinion.  

One important fact not to lose sight of; as of this article's revision date, there were no 

radiocarbon dates or geological/stratigraphic relationships that conclusively resolved the temporal relationship or contemporaneity of Folsom and Midland!

Figure four. Broken backs surface found in Wyoming. 
Folsom (upper) and Midland (lower) projectile point
bases. John Bradford Branney photo and collection.   

Bradley (2010:474) noted that even though investigators have found Folsom and Midland points at the same sites, they have not discovered them together in a well-defined archaeological context that provides the geologic evidence required for proposing that the two projectile point types were in use at the same time! Finding Folsom and Midland points together at a single-episode bison kill site would be an example of the evidence required to define contemporaneity (both point types occurring at the same period of time).  

Bradley noted that archaeological investigators have not found Midland points in sealed stratigraphic units without Folsom points which seems to at least suggest that Folsom and Midland points were linked. He noted an exception to that; the Gault site in Texas where investigators found a Midland point three centimeters above a Folsom point in a sealed stratigraphic unit, indicating that the Midland point was younger than the Folsom point. What we do not know is whether those three centimeters represent one week or one year or one hundred years or more of sedimentation. 

Figure five - The King of Kings. 1.65-inch-long Folsom projectile
point surface found by Albert Bellgardt in Montrose
County, Colorado. John Bradford Branney Collection.

What is your opinion on Midland and Folsom?

Based on radiocarbon dating, it appears that Goshen-Plainview projectile points were coeval or contemporaneous with Folsom/Midland (Waters and Stafford 2014). Goshen-Plainview and Folsom knappers brought pressure flaking to its perfection. When Midland showed up, it was a short technological leap to Goshen-Plainview or vice versa. A much easier leap than to Folsom. Archaeological evidence is now leaning towards Goshen-Plainview, Folsom, and Midland overlapping in space and time, at least during a short period. 

I believe that Paleoindians did not adopt and use just one projectile point type at a time, but like modern-day deer hunters who use different calibers of rifles, Paleoindians used a variation of projectile points. Archaeological evidence just needs to catch up so that some of these theories can be either supported or denied based on evidence.    

             

Blaine, Jay C., S. Alan Skinner b and Molly A. Hall

2017  The Saga of Winkler-1: A Midland Site in Southeast New Mexico in Paleoamerica.   Texas A & M University.  

Bradley, Bruce A. 

2010  Paleoindian Flaked Stone Technology on the Plains and in the Rockies in Prehistoric Hunter and Gatherers of the High Plains and Rockies by Marcel Kornfeld, George C. Frison, and Mary Lou Larson. Left Coast Press. Walnut Creek, California.  

Waters, Michael R., and Thomas W. Stafford Jr.
2014   Redating the Mill Iron Site, Montana, in American Antiquity 79(3).

 

The historical fiction novels written by John Bradford Branney are known for their impeccable research and biting realism. In his latest blockbuster novel Beyond the Campfire, Branney catapults readers back into Paleoindian America where they reunite with some familiar faces from Branney’s best-selling prehistoric adventure series the Shadows on the Trail Pentalogy.

John Bradford Branney holds a geology degree from the University of Wyoming and an MBA from the University of Colorado. John lives in the Colorado mountains with his wife, Theresa. Beyond the Campfire is the eleventh published book by Branney.

Platter Chatter Along the Shadows on the Trail

 

Platter Chatter

By John Bradford Branney

Figure 1 – a trio of Clovis platters cached in southeastern Wyoming and discovered by a highway department employee in the late 1950s or early 1960s. For scale, the middle artifact is 7.9 inches long. John Bradford Branney photograph and collection.

Figure one is a photograph of a cache of three Clovis platters surface found in the late 1950s or early 1960s by a gentleman who worked for the Wyoming Highway Department. The exact location of the find is unknown, but according to his niece, he found the cache while working on a highway in southeastern Wyoming. Based on that information, I assume he was in either Goshen or Laramie County. When the finder died, much of the information about the Clovis platter cache died with him.

The finder’s niece ended up with the collection. She knew little about artifacts and placed the cache into storage where it lay for approximately twenty-five years. Approximately fourteen years ago, a collector and hunter of Paleoindian artifacts named Frank Parrish met the niece at a rock and gem show in Tucson, Arizona. Long story short, Mr. Parrish made an offer for the cache and she accepted. Mr. Parrish saved this cache from a lifetime stuck in a storage locker and/or eternal obscurity. Mr. Parrish sold the cache to me in 2021.

In the literature, authors refer to this type of artifact as platters (Patten 1999; 2005) or ovate bifaces (Waters and Jennings 2015), or discoidal cores (Bradley, Collins, and Hemmings 2010). I will refer to them as Clovis platters since I believe that best describes them. These platters have features that are distinctive to Clovis biface thinning such as wide flakes and spacing, overshot and over-the-face flake scars, alternate flake sequencing, end thinning, and finally on at least one of the platters, Clovis biface platforms as shown in figure two (Bradley, Collins, and Hemming 2010: p 67).

Figure 2 – Clovis biface platform characteristics from page 67 in 

Clovis Technology by Bradley, Collins, and Hemming.

In Clovis Technology, Bradley et. al. pointed out that overshot flaking was not a common feature, and that in most cases it resulted from knapping errors. The same authors noted that overshot flaking had become a marker for defining Clovis biface technology. The authors proclaimed that investigators have yet to find discoidal cores (platters) in Clovis camp or kill site settings, prehistoric quarries, or near the sources of the same raw material.

What did Clovis people use platters for? I like to think of them as portable rock supplies. They either cached them as a backup plan or used them on their wandering to make tools and projectile points. Tankersley (2002: p. 115) described how eight of the nine pieces in the Crook County Clovis Cache were a rock type called Tiger Chert, and the source for Tiger Chert was more than three hundred miles southwest of where Harold Erickson discovered the Clovis cache in Crook County, Wyoming. A Clovis individual, or perhaps a beast of burden such as a dog, hauled these Clovis platters and stone tools from southwestern Wyoming for three hundred miles before caching them within a thin lens of red ochre in the Fox Hills Formation in northeastern Wyoming. Obviously, the Clovis individual never returned to retrieve his or her cache.

The maker of the Clovis platters in figure one used what appears to be orthoquartzite material from the Spanish Diggings prehistoric rock quarry in southwestern Niobrara County, Wyoming. For thousands and thousands of years, prehistoric people mined the orthoquartzite and chert from the Cloverly Formation of Mesozoic age at Spanish Diggings. The orthoquartzite from the quarry ranges in color from bright yellow to gold, tan, brown, 

Figure 3 – Looking in a westerly direction at the prehistoric rock quarry called 

Spanish Diggings in Niobrara County, Wyoming. On the horizon is Laramie Peak.

Photograph by Neil A. Waring.

gray, pink, lavender, and purplish hues. Based on what we know about the provenance of the cache, the highway worker who found them was working on some road in southeastern Wyoming. If that were the case, the finder could have been anywhere from ten to one hundred or so miles from Spanish Diggings when he discovered the cache.

Figure 4 – Side A of Clovis platter A 321 made from Spanish Diggings orthoquartzite. This platter
is 6.9 inches long (176 mm). John Bradford Branney photograph and collection.

Clovis platter A 321 (figure 4) is an oval-shaped biface that is 176 millimeters long, 102 millimeters wide, and approximately 19 millimeters thick near the center of the biface. It has a width to thickness ratio of 5.4. The rock type is a moderate orange-pink orthoquartzite with hues of gray throughout the matrix and scattered manganese dendrites. Clovis knappers’ special skill was percussion flaking, and this platter reflects that expertise. The flaking scars are classic Clovis technology: thin, straight, wide, and long. The marginal edges have a minor amount of secondary sharpening. There is no visual evidence of red ochre on the surface or within the cracks or hinges of the platter.

Figure 5 - Hillside made of red ochre.   

Oftentimes, Clovis people covered or buried their caches in a mineral called red ochre. Ochre is an earthy pigment consisting of ferric oxide and clay minerals. It varies from shades of light yellow to brown to red. There is archaeological evidence that prehistoric people in both the Old and New Worlds used red ochre as a paint pigment, a preservative, an abrasive, and a packing material. Neanderthal people in Europe used ochre as early as 250,000 years ago and investigators have found ochre in Upper Paleolithic graves in Europe and in one Clovis grave in North America.

Investigators have found red ochre in a variety of contexts within North America from occupation floors to burials to stone tool caches to a prehistoric mine. Investigators have found red ochre on a Paleoindian grinding slab and on stone artifacts, foreshafts, main shafts, atlatl fragments, and cave walls. Although it appears red ochre had ritualistic uses, it also served several practical applications.

Figure 6 – Clovis platter A 321 A made from a moderate brown Spanish Diggings 

orthoquartzite. This platter is 7.9 inches long (201 mm). 

John Bradford Branney photograph and collection.

Clovis platter A 321 A (figure 6) is a leaf-shaped biface that is 201 millimeters long, 119 millimeters wide, and approximately 30 millimeters thick near the center of the biface. It has a width to thickness ratio of 4. The rock type is a moderate brown orthoquartzite with scattered blotches of pale yellowish-brown. The flaking scars are typical Clovis; wide, long, and traveling a good distance across both faces of the biface. The marginal edges show little secondary sharpening. There is evidence of battering and crushing along the edges.

Master flintknapper Bob Patten (1999: p 93-94) wrote that although platters were many times larger and heavier than ultrathin knife forms, the production process was similar. As a master flintknapper, Patten opined that Clovis platter technology was as sophisticated as any knapping technology used by later cultures. Patten proposed that Clovis people might have carried these platters in a leather sling or pouch, and when the timing was right, they would either cache them or split and convert them into projectile point preforms or knives. Tankersley (2002: p. 116) found a diagonal pattern of red ochre on two of the Crook County bifaces which suggests the owner of the bifaces might have wrapped them in sinew or leather.

To replicate Clovis platters via his own knapping, Patten described that he beveled, battered, and abraded the edges to ease large flake removal via percussion. Then, he spaced each blow with his hammer wide enough so that the flake scars overlapped ever so slightly.

Figure 7 – Side A of Clovis platter A 321 B. This platter is 8 inches long (203 mm). 

On one edge, the knapper intentionally notched the platter 

and on the other edge, the knapper had prepared to notch it with 

Clovis biface platforms (see figures 2 and 8). 

John Bradford Branney photograph and collection.

Clovis platter A 321 B (figures 7 and 8). This is the most interesting platter of the trio in my opinion. The platter shape lies somewhere between oval and leaf-shaped. It is 203 millimeters long, 130 millimeters wide, and approximately 26 millimeters thick for width to thickness ratio of 5. The knapper used a grayish orange pink orthoquartzite in the making of the artifact.

The knapper intentionally notched one side of Platter A 321 B in the middle of the edge. He or she was preparing to notch the other edge when the knapper cached it with the other two platters. The opposite edge (figure 8) shows at least two Clovis biface platforms which the knapper would have used to strike and detach flakes with the intention of notching into the body of the biface. Notches weaken the biface body enough to split the platter into sections which the knapper would use for Clovis projectile points or other stone tools.

Figure 8 – "A" marks the beaten and the battered edge of side B of A 321 B. 

"P" marks typical Clovis biface platforms. The Clovis knapper was starting to notch this edge. 

Compare the characteristics of the platform with figure 2 above. 

John Bradford Branney photograph and collection. 

So, why did Clovis people cache these platters and other tools? Archaeologists and collectors have discovered Clovis-type artifacts in forty-eight states, Mexico, and Canada. Clovis people got around, and they did it in a relatively short time period. Based on thirty-two radiocarbon ages, Waters, Stafford, and Carlson (2020) proposed that Clovis technology was around for approximately three hundred years from around 13,050 to 12,750 calendar years ago. Clovis people were explorers and when they reached unexplored areas where they were unsure of the supply chain for tool stone, they left behind a cache of stone tools and raw material in case they needed it later.

 Time for me to get a little “preachy”. One big lesson learned from this cache is to fully document the details and location of every artifact find or acquisition as accurately and completely as possible to ensure relevant information about the artifacts is available after we are no longer above ground! Without provenance, artifacts are just rocks or works of art.

It is unfortunate that when the finder of this important discovery died, the provenance details died with him. I have a dozen or so questions about this cache, but the answers left the earth with its finder. We will never know where he exactly found the cache, or under what circumstances. Was the cache found on the surface or buried? Did the road-building equipment unearth it? Did the finder investigate whether there were other pieces in the cache? My list of questions goes on and on. Unfortunately, I can ask all the questions I want until I am blue in the face, but will never get an answer.

References Cited

Bradley, Bruce A., Michael B. Collins, and Andrew Hemmings
2010     Clovis Technology. International Monographs in Prehistory. Archaeological Series                 17. Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Patten, Bob
1999     Old Tools – New Eyes. Stone Dagger Publications. Denver.

2005     People of the Flute. Stone Dagger Publications. Denver.

Tankersley, Kenneth
2002     In Search of Ice Age Americans. Gibbs Smith, Publisher. Layton, Utah.

Waters, Michael R. and Thomas A. Jennings
2015     The Hogeye Clovis Cache. Texas A & M University. College Station.

Waters, Michael R., Thomas W. Stafford Jr., and David L. Carlson
2020     The Age of Clovis – 13,050 to 12,750 cal yr B.P. in Science Advances, Vol. 6, No.                 43.

About the Author

John Bradford Branney is a Wyoming native, an author, a geologist, a prehistorian, and an associate editor of Prehistoric AMERICAN. He has written ten books and many magazine articles on Prehistoric America and life in general. Branney is currently writing the fifth and final book in the prehistoric adventure series the SHADOWS on the TRAIL Pentalogy. He lives on forty acres in the northern Colorado mountains with his wife Theresa, three German Shepherds, and a feral cat.

CLICK for JOHN Bradford BRANNEY Books