Hope is Never Lost - A Shadows on the Trail Adventure

Figure One - 21.5-inch-long metate surface found on September 4, 2013.
It was a haul getting it back to the vehicle.   

One thing I love about artifact hunting is that you never know what you will find. For those of us old enough to remember, artifact hunting is kind of like finding the prize in a Cracker Jack box - you never knew what it was going to be. On an artifact hunt, you always start out with great hopes and expectations of finding that elusive three-inch Folsom or that bushel basket full of bird points, and no one can debate whether that will happen or not until the hunt is over. Over the years, I have been on a few great hunts, a pile of decent hunts, and several real stinkers, but there was one thing in common. At the beginning of the hunt, I always expected to slay the artifact dragon!           

It appears that the older I get, the fewer opportunities I have to hunt artifacts. I always figured it would be the other way around. That when I entered my silver or golden years, I would have much more time. It has not worked out that way. Therefore, when I do get the opportunity to hunt artifacts, I jump at the chance. That is exactly what I did at the start of Labor Day Week in 2013 when I left the dog days of Houston, Texas, and headed for the temperate climate of Wyoming and Colorado. 

You cannot imagine how excited I was to jump on that airplane and get out of Dodge, I mean Houston! Well, I tried to jump on that airplane, but ‘traveler gotchas’ bit me. After waiting to board the already two-hour-late flight, the airline carrier (they remain nameless) told its passengers the plane was not airworthy. They blamed a stripped bolt on one of the seats or some other lame excuse. I was so amped up for some artifact hunting I tried to convince the customer service rep to duct tape that puppy and get us on our way to Denver. Of course, she recited the 'rules are rules for our safety’ routine from page 305, paragraph three of her customer service manual. She did mention that duct tape was never mentioned once in the manual. 

Figure Two - On my artifact hunts, the scenery is usually
worth the price of admission. 

I joined the unhappy herd of a hundred fellow passengers stampeding toward the customer service desk to finagle another flight to Denver. After the usual pushing, shoving, and begging, I ended up on one of those cigar-sized planes where you cannot fully stand up in the aisle, and the luggage racks were designed for fanny packs. After jockeying for some precious elbow room with my rowmate, we were finally on the way.

By late afternoon, I arrived in Denver and even though there was little daylight left for hunting, I headed to the distant hills. After all, a couple hours of artifact hunting is always better than no artifact hunting at all. I found some chips and broken artifacts, but nothing to write home to Mom about. As the reddish sun sank behind the beautiful Front Range, I headed for Cheyenne, Wyoming, where I stayed with my mother.

The next day arrived too slowly. I was like a ten-year-old kid waiting for Santa Claus to show up on Christmas morning. My hopes and expectations were at a fever pitch. I had dreamt of Clovis caches sitting out on the open prairie, just waiting for me to walk up and find them. At the break of dawn, I was roaring down the interstate highway, trying to hold the rental pickup truck under the speed limit. After all, I did not need another speeding ticket to add to my artifact-hunting memories. I reached my destination and jumped out almost before the pickup truck came to a complete stop. I walked one hundred feet or so and found a beautiful Washita bird point made by a hunter from the Upper Republican culture sometime around A.D. 1000 to A.D. 1400 (figure three). Those nomadic people from the east made some beautiful projectile points and I was lucky enough to find one! I found numerous artifacts during the day and I could hardly wait to see what the rest of the week had in store for me.

Figure Three - Small Washita bird point from the Upper Republican culture. 

Early the next morning, I headed a hundred or so miles west to a private ranch I had not hunted in quite some time. With the drought conditions that were plaguing the Rocky Mountain region, I knew the vegetation would be sparse, but I had no idea how sparse it was. Lack of moisture combined with relentless spring and summertime winds led to a bad situation for most ranchers in the area, but good conditions for artifact hunting. When I arrived at my destination, I was unprepared for what I saw. When a sand blowout crosses a prehistoric campsite, good times can be had! With blue skies and hardpan soil combined with the rich smell of evergreens and sagebrush, I thought I died and gone to heaven.                                                          

Figure Four - Blowout Number One with a broken metate
eroding to the surface in the middle of the photograph. 

My first stop was a site I named Blowout Number One for this article (figure four). I immediately picked up a beautiful jasper side-notched arrow point (figure five). After photographing and admiring the arrow point’s workmanship, I walked fifty feet and found a cortical blade, one of the favorite tool forms from earlier Paleoindian cultures, especially Clovis. Do I believe Clovis People made that particular cortical blade? My answer is a definitive maybe! On previous hunts in that area, I found two Clovis points but since that cortical blade was a surface find in a wind-deflated blowout, I or anyone else can't define the age and culture of that artifact.

Figure Five - Plains Side-Notched arrow point found at
Blowout Number One.   

Prehistoric people deliberately made and used cortical blades as tools. Figure six is a photograph of the cortical blade's dorsal side, exhibiting two separate negative scars from blades previously removed from the same core stone. The ridge separating the two blade scars is called an arris. The extraction of a previous blade created a sharp edge at the top of the cortical blade. The original cortex from the core stone is along the bottom side of the cortical blade. The cortex provided a dull edge for the prehistoric user to hold on to while using the blade as a butchering or hide-preparing knife. To the left is the rounded striking platform that was used to remove the cortical blade from the core stone. 

Figure Six - Dorsal side of 3.1-inch-long cortical blade made from a
moderate reddish-brown jasper.   

Bradley et al (2010) labeled a type of blade with cortex remaining on one edge a naturally backed knife. Figure seven is the ventral side of the same cortical blade and exhibits some of the longitudinal curvature of the tool. Note the fine linear retouch along the upper edge of the blade that happens to be the opposite edge from the cortex on the dorsal side. I often wonder how many beautiful blade tools I walked past on previous artifact hunts. I learned early in my artifact hunting to pick up and examine nearly every flake I cross paths with. 

Figure Seven - Ventral side of the 3.1-inch-long cortical blade.
Note linear retouch on the upper edge and striking platform on the right. 

I filled my pockets full of prehistoric flake tools and broken artifacts from wind-scoured Blowout Number One. Then, I saw it, the tilted bow of the Titanic sinking in the Atlantic Ocean! No, I was not hallucinating in the hot sun. It was a large piece of sandstone, tipped toward the sky and half buried in the sand. It only resembled the sinking Titanic from a distance and with a little imagination. I pried the sandstone slab from the ground and found it was a well-made prehistoric metate (figures one and eight). From figure eight, it is apparent which end of the metate was buried in the sand. Finding this massive metate created a problem. My back was not going to like lugging that heavy metate up and down the hills for the rest of the day. I recorded the GPS coordinates for the artifact and left it in the sand while I continued my hunt.

Figure Eight - 21.5-inch-long metate unburied.  

                             

I departed Blowout Number One and hoofed it to the west for a mile or so to what I call Blowout Number Two (another creative name, don't you think?). The incessant winds eroded that prehistoric campsite by as much as two feet in some places, leaving shattered rock and multi-cultural chipping debris littering the ground across several acres.

 

Figure Nine - Blowout Number Two. Note the depth of
erosion at the embankment at the top of the hill.  

When I climbed to the top of the hill in figure nine, I discovered a beautiful, weathered dart point (figure ten). The projectile point exhibited collateral flaking, characteristic of Cody Complex projectile points. However, the base of the projectile point was not ground or polished, completely uncharacteristic for Paleoindian or Early Archaic projectile points. In the general area surrounding Blowout Number Two, I previously found diagnostic artifacts from Clovis, Agate Basin, and Cody Complex so I know these people once inhabited the area. Note: since that visit to Blowout Number Two, I came up with another possibility for that projectile point's type: Jimmy Allen. After finding two more projectile points and broken artifacts, my day ended grandly. 

Figure Ten - 1.8-inch-long Eden or Jimmy Allen dart point. 

The next day I headed to another ranch in central Wyoming where I hunted a dry creek drainage for a decade or so. From the vast quantity of prehistoric artifacts that I have found over the years along that dry creek, it is apparent that the creek wasn't always dry. The lithic scatter borders the creek for at least one-half mile. Over the last decade, I found literally hundreds of artifacts, ranging in age from Paleoindian to historical times, along that stretch of overgrazed and windblown pasture. I even scored a beautiful corner tang knife a couple of seasons earlier. When I arrived at the ranch, I expected the same gorgeous weather from the previous day, but my luck did not hold out. It was early September and an icy wind was blowing from the north. The wind chilled my Texas bones to the core, but I was not the only one feeling the late summer chill. My little viper friend in figure eleven remained huddled up against a surveyor stake while I walked around it looking for artifacts.

 

Figure Eleven - "Say hello to my little friend!"  

I did not wander too far from the prairie rattler before I found a beautiful, large plano-convex end scraper seen in figure twelve. That is a massive end scraper measuring 3 inches in length and 1.6 inches in width. The person who made that wonderful tool used a material that I had not seen before, a light gray jasper with a touch of purple. As I walked, I found enough artifacts to fill my pants pocket. It had been a while since I did that well hunting on that ranch and it felt good. Bad weather or not, I was finding artifacts.

 

Figure Twelve - 3.0-inch-long end scraper made from a light gray jasper. 

I found so many broken artifacts and tools that day that I could fill the magazine article with photographs, but I will end my story with one last artifact, a beautiful little corner notched arrow point with a banged-up tip (figure thirteen). Not a perfect artifact by any means, but it ended up being a nice touch to a nearly perfect artifact-hunting day.

Figure Thirteen - a near-perfect artifact
for a near-perfect day. 

On the airplane flight back to Houston, I was at peace with the world because I was mentally rested and I found a ton of artifacts. Hope is never lost on any artifact trip, and on that trip, I found hope in abundance. 

References Cited

Bradley, Bruce A., Michael B. Collins, and Andrew Hemmings

2010    Clovis Technology. International Monographs in Prehistory, Ann Arbor, MI.               

 

About the Author

John Bradford Branney is a geologist, prehistorian, and author with eleven books to his name and countless journal and magazine articles on archaeology and paleontology. Branney grew up in Wyoming and started collecting artifacts from the time he could walk. He has documented an extensive High Plains artifact collection. At the time of this artifact trip, Branney lived in Texas but in 2015, he and his family moved to the Colorado mountains where they currently reside.