Native American Camp Site discovered! (North Texas)

[torbjon]

"That is a real concern imo, there is so much "stuff" boxed and stored in back rooms in museums all around the world that might never see the light of day."

*laughs* Like some of the stuff in your collection, ey mojo? *grins* At least take more pics and post 'em... don't keep alla that stuff tucked away...

Shaman: Is there a college / university near you with an archeology department? Maybe (discreetly) hit up a professor or a few students and see what they have to say about the artifacts...

Reading what Chorlton wrote, I'd be a little bit leery about hitting up museums or "powers that be"... they might come and take your family land away from you for their own dig and then not share any of the "wealth" or "information" that they discover...

[lost_shaman]

Shaman: Is there a college / university near you with an archeology department? Maybe (discreetly) hit up a professor or a few students and see what they have to say about the artifacts...

I'd certainly check into talking to someone when and if the oppertunity presents itself. However, as I said the artifacts seem analogous to those found at the Herrell site, as such I don't see any real urgency in contacting anyone.

You have to remember that this site is located on a farmers wheat field that gets plowed up about twice a year. The only real urgency is to pick-up as many artifacts as possible before the Farmer comes back with his plow and crushes everything he just plowed up several months ago.

Here is a pic of some of the artifacts from the site.



Points on the upper left. A Mano in the upper middle. Upper right, end scraper and Graver (these two from different location). Middle left, base half of a broken interesting shaped sandstone grinder(other half of artifact has also been found not pictured here). Middle center, Hafted scrapers/blades/thumb-nail scrapers and a beautiful pencil drill. Bottom, pottery shards.

[torbjon]

Dude! Nice finds! Thank you for taking the time to take pics and share...

I'm a bit confused though... Your OP had this line it:

"I suggested to a Friend that we should look around a natural Spring I knew of that existed on my Families Property."

But here you say:

"You have to remember that this site is located on a farmers wheat field that gets plowed up about twice a year."

So is it Your Families property or some Other families property or does this farmer lease the land from your family or what?

I'm also having a hard time envisioning a natural spring in a wheat field that gets plowed over year after year... I dunno... quagmire comes to mind... is it dried up or something?

It may seem kind of a mundane site to you, but it seems really Cool to me, and perhaps a great place for local college kids to get some real field experience in, tha's all...

Love your collection though, Very Jealous.

[lost_shaman]

Dude! Nice finds! Thank you for taking the time to take pics and share...

Hey torbjon,

No problem. I just regret having to post such bad pictures.

I'm a bit confused though... Your OP had this line it:

"I suggested to a Friend that we should look around a natural Spring I knew of that existed on my Families Property."

But here you say:

"You have to remember that this site is located on a farmers wheat field that gets plowed up about twice a year."

So is it Your Families property or some Other families property or does this farmer lease the land from your family or what?

I'm sorry for the confusion here. I can totally see where confusion might arise, let me try to explain.

The spring is on my families property. This property runs North to South and is split in half by the East to West County Road. The spring is right at the south-west corner of the North lot where the county road makes a "T" to the North. This dirt County road separates the North lot of my families land from the Farmers land that contains the surface site being collected.

So we literally pulled up on the County road facing West where the spring on my families property is directly a few feet North of us and we were facing within a few feet of the "T" in the road and looking directly at the "blow-out" on the adjacent corner of the Farmers field. My Families land hasn't seen a plow in decades so its very grown up and it's no place to look for artifacts, yet just in front of us was the perfect place; a 'blow-out' in a plowed field next to a creek and a spring. So the surface site is just across the County road from my families land w/the spring.

It may seem kind of a mundane site to you, but it seems really Cool to me, and perhaps a great place for local college kids to get some real field experience in, tha's all...

I don't think any of it is 'mundane' at all! I LOVE picking up a piece of rock and recognizing it as a tool!

The thing everyone has to realize is that Farmers are not about to let 'college kids' come excavate in the middle of perfectly good Farmland.

Love your collection though, Very Jealous.

Wait until I get a better camera!

[torbjon]

Okay, I think I got a lay of the land now that makes sense, thanks muchly...

With the amount of stuff you've found from the plowed up side of the road it sure seems like a rather large group of people living there for a prolonged period of time... whereas the Farmers side of the road is by far the easiest place to poke around, there's Gotta be oodles of groovy goodies on Your side of the road too, don'tcha think?

Maybe not in the same concentrations, but still... We're only talking a few hundred feet at best between his easy to pick land and your overgrown pain in the butt land, right? It would do the college kids some good to get out in the rattle snake infested, thorn ridden home for ticks and scratch some near virgin overgrown soil for artifacts, ya know?

After all, that's what it's all about.

And never apologize for sharing pics *pokes* Doesn't matter how good the shot is, someone (else) will always complain. I think the shot shared is Great. We need to lean on Mojo to get the rest of his collection photographed and online as well. The more the merrier, right?

duty calls.
twj

[lost_shaman]

Okay, I think I got a lay of the land now that makes sense, thanks muchly...

Hey Torbjon,

Sure no problem. I could also try and dig up a sat. photo or something to post in the next couple days. I'm sure that would help, I'm just to busy to mess with it tonight.

With the amount of stuff you've found from the plowed up side of the road it sure seems like a rather large group of people living there for a prolonged period of time... whereas the Farmers side of the road is by far the easiest place to poke around, there's Gotta be oodles of groovy goodies on Your side of the road too, don'tcha think?

Yeah, I do think that is almost certainly the case.

Maybe not in the same concentrations, but still... We're only talking a few hundred feet at best between his easy to pick land and your overgrown pain in the butt land, right? It would do the college kids some good to get out in the rattle snake infested, thorn ridden home for ticks and scratch some near virgin overgrown soil for artifacts, ya know?

After all, that's what it's all about.

Yes, you are right about the distance being very short and I also agree that College kids should get out and dig excavations and find artifacts. It's just that none of that is about to happen on my Families Estate anytime soon.

For one thing you don't just call up the nearest University and ask them to send college kids to come dig up perfectly good farmland.

Also, Texas law apparently allows any landowner to request an excavation, but at the landowners expense. So even if someone ,in good faith, did invite college kids to do an excavation on ones' property, at the end of the day so to speak you run the risk of someone sending you a massive bill for the excavation.

Then we come to the problems I talked about earlier in this thread. That being what happens to artifacts after college kids/Archaeologists find them and they end up in the hands of Universities and Museums?

The answer seems clear cut. Artifacts end up in boxes in basements and nothing ever gets published about them and no pictures ever get posted and NO access to the artifacts ever gets granted.

And never apologize for sharing pics *pokes* Doesn't matter how good the shot is, someone (else) will always complain. I think the shot shared is Great. We need to lean on Mojo to get the rest of his collection photographed and online as well. The more the merrier, right?

duty calls.
twj

Exactly, both Mojo and I are only limited in sharing 'our' artifacts by the quality of 'our' respective cameras. Try asking your local Museum or University to share pictures of artifacts!

Sure the University or Museum might offer pictures of Museum quality artifacts to you, but in my experience I've found and seen thousands of artifacts/debitage and of all that maybe less than five pieces might be considered Museum quality!

[mojo]

We need to lean on Mojo to get the rest of his collection photographed and online as well. The more the merrier, right?

duty calls.
twj

though its not artifacts i'm getting some of my aboriginal art framed before xmas, some of them are wonderful, i'll get pics for you when there done, the rest of the stuff i'll get out of storage and photographed eventually, after i get through my spring cleaning list my wife has given me lol.