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Here are two links to posts dealing with how to post pictures on Black River Fossils forums.
1. How to Post Pictures on Black River Fossils Forums by ditchweezil
2. How to Post Pictures on Black River Fossils Forums by Daryl
Trying to identify some of these things drives me crazy. Some are fairly obvious and others???? I have several books on the subject and they are full of conflicting info. Take the thin triangle pieces for example. One says they were knives/blades and another says they were notchless arrowheads. I've talked to people that know a lot more about it than I do, with the same results. one will say one thing and the next tells me something else. I guess things like that were probably used for whatever was needed at the time. Maybe I need to lighten up huh?
Thanks jax. We have ended up with quite a few places to hunt over the past few years. Some are better than others, but we find a few things in most of them each year. My girlfriend and I are obsessed with it and spend a lot of time looking. There IS a lot of work that goes into making a point. I saw a guy making some on TV once. I was impressed.
I just did a big blurb on artifacts and it disappeared, so here's the short version. The way I tell the difference between points and knives is symmetry. Points need to have near perfect symmetry for the arrow to fly true. When sharpened, they are sharpened equally on both sides. Knives are usually sharpened more on one side than the other because the handles were more comfortable on one side than the other. One side was being used more so it got sharpened more and the blade ends up lop-sided. Another subject to think about is Arrowhead or Atl-atl point????
You make some good points, Thank you. I actually have been wondering if some of the larger points could have been used with the Atl-atl. I have been told and seen in print, that most points larger than an inch or so were all used as spearpoints. We have several that would seem to fall between an arrowhead and a spear point and the Atl-atl makes sense. Thanks again.
When I get some time I will post some of the artifacts I have found as a by-product of fossil hunting. I have pottery shards, scrapers, points, knives, grooved axes, celts, and a pipe made from red ocher among other things. Last week I found a hand axe/scraper/core while screening for shark teeth. I haven't cleaned it up so I don't know what it is yet. It could be any or all of the three. Unfortunately most of the material in my area is quartz and quartzite so the artifacts tend to be crude, but I also find flint artifacts in Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, and occasionally in North Carolina. I even have a point I found in a ditch in Summerville, South Carolina.