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Artifact hunting

deerdown

deerdown

Well-Known Member
Anyone on here hunt artifacts? I've been looking for about 2 years, and finally found my first worked piece this past weekend while visiting friends in Southern Missouri. At least that's what they tell me on the Facebook Artifact Group I'm on.

I've been looking in NW Mo mostly to no avail. The old timers in the area I'm in, talk about finding tomahawks, arrowheads in their gardens, etc.

Anyone else hunt?
 

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I have a friend that finds a lot… dozens ! He looks on hills that overlook a lake in Minnesota. That’s the spot I guess?

I’ve only found one, but I don’t look much either .
 
Hardwood11 said:
I have a friend that finds a lot… dozens ! He looks on hills that overlook a lake in Minnesota. That’s the spot I guess?

I’ve only found one, but I don’t look much either .
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I will admit to paying a little more attention to a disked field after a rain, etc, but do not consider myself a true artifact hunter. I do know several people that are pretty serious about it though, I think it is a cool pastime, I just have enough irons in the fire that I don't need another one. :) Similar to high ground overlooking lakes...I understand that high ground overlooking river bottoms are a prime place here in Iowa.

Also, one of my friends got all geeked up when he learned that I was building a pond several years ago. I let him look to his hearts content while the digging was going on, FWIW.
 
A relative farmed around Tama and had a jewelry glass display case down his basement full of things from arrowheads to mallets.

I’ve only found one rock that appeared to have been worked, vaguely looked like it was an arrowhead.


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Daver said:
I will admit to paying a little more attention to a disked field after a rain, etc, but do not consider myself a true artifact hunter. I do know several people that are pretty serious about it though, I think it is a cool pastime, I just have enough irons in the fire that I don't need another one. :) Similar to high ground overlooking lakes...I understand that high ground overlooking river bottoms are a prime place here in Iowa.

Also, one of my friends got all geeked up when he learned that I was building a pond several years ago. I let him look to his hearts content while the digging was going on, FWIW.
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I, too, like to walk disturbed fields close to water, old creek beds, but I haven't come up with anything in NW Missouri.

Curious if your friend found anything while they dug your pond?

Edited: to say NW Missouri...
 
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I've found one point. Pure luck, walking a bank along the river edge about 10 feet above the drop down into the river channel. It was a plowed field in the spring. Stopped and looked down and bam, right there was a beauty laying right at my feet. I was just walking to check out the river, wasnt looking. I've been back to that spot a few times and havent found anything else.

Couple years ago I found a scraper. And there is a creek I've checked a few times that is rocky and have found flakes and worked material, even some heat treated, but have not found any actual points/scrapers etc there.

Seems to really get into the hobby you have to have a lot of luck and stumble into a good site or already know of one.
 
deerdown said:
I, too, like to walk disturbed fields close to water, old creek beds, but I haven't come up with anything in Missouri.

Curious if your friend found anything while they dug your pond?
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He said he did not find anything, but...there were boot prints in the mud, suggesting that someone else may have walked it before he got there. While we couldn't be sure because those prints could have been made by someone working on the earth moving crew while building the pond, etc, there is precedent in our neighborhood for interlopers to aggressively walk fresh dirt. Our area is apparently well known by the artifact hunting crews.

Also, I am not sure which is worse, trespassers looking for mushrooms or trespassers looking for artifacts. Both are more prevalent in our area than trespassers hunting, FWIW.
 
My brother and I bought a small farm with a little "seasonal" crick that runs through it and have now found 8 no doubters over the last two years. A few more that seemed "worked" but not certain. The crazy thing is all have come from a 50yd x 50yd area. We've grid searched it several times with no luck, but have accidentally come across every single one. The one came digging the hole to plant a tree. Flipped the shovel with 10" of of dirt over and there it was shining. Pure luck

What's interesting is the crick is just a mud field tile run off waterway now that dries up mostly during the summer. I wonder if 300+ years ago it was a flowing hard bottom crick that they were camping on, that just silted in once farming came around. Much smarter people I know tell me the last tribes in the area were gone around 1730. Fun to wonder how old they really could be!
 

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I've looked a fair amount and had some luck over the years. My dad got interested in it as a kid after he stumbled across a maul in the hog lot... back when hogs weren't confined and were constantly rooting up the ground. He also found a stone that was perfectly round. He was told by an old timer that was an avid artifact hunter and found 1000s of artifacts over the years, that it was probably a game ball. He also found some REALLY nice blades while cultivating corn back in the day. He has always said watching for artifacts was the only way to make that mind numbing job bearable, ha.

Those blades, interestingly enough, were quite some distance away from a river or stream and on an expansive flat of high ground. The same old timer thought back in the day that there was probably a buffalo wallow in that flat somewhere and because of that, they did a lot of hunting in that area. The field he found these blades in might have been a butcher site after a successful hunt because it was very unlikely they would have had any kind of camp where this field was, because of the lack of a water source.

His interest rubbed off on me after taking me once as a kid and I actually found one (lower left point in the picture). I wish I had some pictures of dad's stuff because it's nicer than the points I've found. He even found a shark tooth (yes, a shark tooth in Iowa) that was imbedded in a rock about the size of a baseball. So that would easily take the cake for the oldest find.... by many millions of years.

My coolest is probably the small white scraper (very bottom in picture) with the fossil inclusion. They had a decorative just like us. I am always on the lookout for them. Bare soil in fields, rock bars of cricks while walking into a stand, etc. They are everywhere, it's just most are covered up. But if you look down long enough, you'll find one. They really are everywhere... like you losing a set of pliers or dropping a nail or screw in the grass, happens all the time. Only their tools will still be here in a 1,000 more years and ours won't.

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About the coolest thing I’ve found is a meteorite just a little smaller than a baseball, very heavy.I took it to work to do elemental analysis on it. Turned out to be nickel based, the most common type. :(. Still cool though.


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JNRBRONC said:
About the coolest thing I’ve found is a meteorite just a little smaller than a baseball, very heavy.I took it to work to do elemental analysis on it. Turned out to be nickel based, the most common type. :(. Still cool though.


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Shut the front door! The most common type of the least common thing you can find!


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Picked them up for years. Kind of like mushrooms once your brain gets set you can see the edges and corners sticking out of the dirt.Notill farming it’s tough. Backing the day of plowing every thing it would of been a cake walk.
 
Found the one on the left when I was 10 years old. My parents built a house on my grandfather's farm in 1965, I would ride my bike through the bare dirt yard and hit the back brakes and slide when it flew up and hit me. Not sure where I found the other. It made me visualize an Indian hunting on that farm many moons ago. I wanted to be an Indian!

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203ntyp said:
Found the one on the left when I was 10 years old. My parents built a house on my grandfather's farm in 1965, I would ride my bike through the bare dirt yard and hit the back brakes and slide when it flew up and hit me. Not sure where I found the other. It made me visualize an Indian hunting on that farm many moons ago. I wanted to be an Indian!

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On my bucket list to find just 1 that good! Neat pieces.....
 
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