Arrowhead - any experts here?

[Dawg In Montana]

Anyone know much about arrowheads? Found this (8 years ago and forgot about it for most of that) when redoing backyard landscaping in Franklin, TN, just south of Nashville. I’ve been told it may be more ceremonial and not used for hunting, but it wasn’t an opinion I’d place a whole lotta faith in. It weighs 266 grains.

 

[Nickofthewoods]

There is an arrowhead ID app for your phone where you just take a picture of the arrowhead and upload it. I just recently heard about it so have not personally used it yet.

 

[RockAndSage]

Cool arrowhead. I wouldn't trust the idea that it was "ceremonial" though - it seems like that's always what anthropologists say when they don't understand something's original use.

Generally speaking, the older the point, the bigger the point - because the older the timeframe, the bigger the animals. There was a big, catastrophic loss of megafauna about 12,000 years ago in North America, but they didn't all instantly die off. There were pockets of mammoths and other big animals up to about 6,000 years ago, give or take a 1000, depending on the animal and the location.

Your point looks simply to be a big arrowhead, or a smaller atlatl point. It'd be like someone discovering a .375 H&H cartridge 5000 years from now for the first time, comparing it to all the .223 evidence they have, and saying the big one must be ceremonial.

 

[RockAndSage]

There is an arrowhead ID app for your phone where you just take a picture of the arrowhead and upload it. I just recently heard about it so have not personally used it yet.

That was a great tip, unfortunately it looks like it's not in the apple store at the moment, but I'll definitely be checking back. Would love to have it on my phone.

 

[Slickhill]

Almost certainly an Atlatl dart or spear point, far too large to be used with a bow. It is believed that many times these points were hafted to use as hand tools as well. Many of the huge “spear” points you see were most likely knife blades. Actual arrowheads used with bows will be very small varieties, look up Washita, Harrell, and Madison triangles for examples, I have examples of these types that are small enough to fit on your thumbnail. Good possibility your point is from the Archaic period. The tip shows what looks to me signs of reworking, IE sharpening after use and likely a fracture, it may have started out much longer. Probably some kind of local chert to the area you found it for a material.

Good find, I love artifacts and hunting them.

 

[Yoteassasin]

Cool find . My kid found this in a creek near a cross fence while we were moving cows

 

[Tick]

Projectile Points of Tennessee

Projectile Points of Tennessee

www.projectilepoints.net

Couple of options.

Grand Corner Notch

Kirk Corner Notched

 

[Slickhill]

Cool find . My kid found this in a creek near a cross fence while we were moving cows

That’s a beauty of a lanceolate point. Looks like nice material too.

 

[Yoteassasin]

That’s a beauty of a lanceolate point. Looks like nice material too.

Ya he was stoked to find it . We are in a wild part of the Bay Area . It’s likely less than 100 souls have wandered this valley in the last 150 years .

 

[IdahoElk]

Cool find! I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t a few thousand years old. If it is in fact a Lanceolate it could be 10,000yrs old.

 

[cday34]

I just found my first one. Turkey hunting in Ohio.

 

[dlee56]

There is an arrowhead ID app for your phone where you just take a picture of the arrowhead and upload it. I just recently heard about it so have not personally used it yet.

Sounds like a way for the feds to slap a felony on folks for illegal artifact poaching.
I for one have found all my arrowheads in my back yard and friends property

 

[kpk]

I'm very jealous of those that find arrowheads. I live in an area where they are supposedly all over the place, especially where I spend most of recreational time, but I never find anything.

 

[GSPHUNTER]

My friend in Indiana who his an expert in Native American artifacts. He has thousands of artifacts either he, or his father and grandfather have found over many years. He told me what you have there is either a Hopewell or Snyder point type. both are from the same area and of the same time frame. 2500-1500 BP. B.P. meaning Before Present.

 

[TaperPin]

Pretty cool. Nice size. Definitely has been around the block. Archeologists tend to talk a lot about how consistent and expertly made and maintained different points are, but just like now, kids get hand-me-downs, or try to make discarded tools work, and get together with other kids and do things that are pretty rough on knives, guns and fishing poles. Had I been back then teenage me would bet my lazy-eyed cousin he couldn’t stab a sleeping black bear with that point on a long stick, or if really bored we’d throw it at turtles to show off to the ladies.

 

[Slickhill]

An itty bitty Washita I found in a wheat field.
A Harrell that was about ten steps away.

 

[naneumranch]

Wow, here in the state of Washington if I posted that arrowhead, I’d have the tribe at my property doing tribal archaeological studies. In the county I’m in. They’re pushing for a pre-site study prior to home construction. And of course cost is out of the homeowners pocket.


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[GSPHUNTER]

An itty bitty Washita I found in a wheat field.
A Harrell that was about ten steps away.

I think those were used to hunt small animals and birds.

 

[dlee56]

I think those were used to hunt small animals and birds.

You can actually kill moose with a small caliber like that if you hit them in the right spot

 

[Slickhill]

I think those were used to hunt small animals and birds.

They probably were. But they were likely used to hunt most anything else that they would have shot with the bows they had at that point in time.

These styles of points are some of the latest stone projectile points made before the shift to iron trade points, they could be less than 200 years old. The few intact bows that have been found in the area, along with written accounts of the bows being used when contact was made suggest that they were very short self bows of relatively light draw weight. The bows just wouldn’t have had the power to propel an arrow with a big rock on the end of it very well. The people using them also had all the time in the world to follow up a wounded animal, it was literally their job. I would also assume they were far more skilled trackers than the average modern human and possibly had dogs for such duties as well.

Very good possibility that they shot 100 rabbits and 200 prairie chickens for every one deer they killed as well.

This part of the world is the great buffalo range and contemporary accounts have the Indians using lances to hunt them from horseback instead of bows.