reworked point id?

[felton]

I found this little guy near the Caswell / Person Co. border. The closest I can come to figuring out what it is/was is a Guilford Yuma. It's 1 1/2 long 3/4 wide and 3/8 thick. Any ideas?

[arappaho]

I can hear that guy now, felton, muttering under his breath
while he whacks whats left of that point into the fine little nub
you have there, " I'm a goin' to KILL me some fiddles with this
here point if'n it's the LAST thing I do!"

But it does make for a tough call.

That broken chip of a piece missing out of the notch in the base
doesn't help much either. Tho it kinda looks like it was there from
the beginning? That's reelly crude, you know what I mean?
That's one reason I'm going to have to go with a Savannah River
on this one. I don't think a Guilford craftsman would've
overlooked that and used it anyway, as the case "may" be.
The other being that the whole base seems to have
expanded up toward some shoulders that are now all but absent,
but wouldn't have been there to begin with on a Guilford.

It's still a hard call. There is such a thing as a "Shouldered-
Guilford", but the ones I've seen aren't this crude. There is
nothing but percussion flaking on here, which fits the attributes
of both the Guilford-Yuma and the Sav.River.
I have not gotten totally comfortable with the Guilford-Yuma as
an explained/described point type yet, (and that's another story)
but the Yuma suffix implies more age to me, and I think ,
because of the 'thickness' of this point/tool that we're looking at
the end of the Guilford period and on into Sav. River, or the end
of the Archaic around 4000 BP.

AND, , there are a couple small "types" like this that have been
found pretty reguarly in these parts that haven't been "typed" yet.

Just my thoughts on it, felton.
Joe

[felton]

Thanks Arappaho, that's more info than I bargained for. I didn't think of taking the crudeness level into consideration...I'm only 4 years in so I have a lot to learn.

I have a lot of other stuff to photograph and post as I clean and get ready to move to S.C. in a few weeks. Hopefully I'll have some good luck down there!

[arappaho]

Well yeah, felton, , Not that there are any rules without
exceptions, , one good rule of thumb as far as artifacts goes
is, 'the older they are, the better made they are'.

The "Bible" for artifact identification in the Carolinas is Joffre Coes'
book, "The Formative Cultures of the Carolina Piedmont".
It's a 'must-have' book for any serious collector around here. It
was out-of-print for almost 20 years and used copies were selling
for $150.00 and up, but they finally reprinted it about 5 years ago
and you can order a copy online, (if you want), from CFAR, the
Coe Foundation for Archaeological Research. $20.00, plus $5 for
shipping. Their website is;
www.coe-foundation.org/

And when I was checking that site to see if they still had the
book for sale, I discovered they have a brand new Artifact Info
and Identification Page. It looks pretty darn good!

Best of Luck with the move and send some pics of what you find
down there. You ought to have pretty good luck 'cause I hear
them SC yocals wouldn't know a arrowhead if it crawled up and
bit them in the ankle! ;D

Joe

[ghostrecon]

Nice find, I agree with arrapaho on his i.d. either Guilford or a heavily resharpened Savannah River. Both of those types are pretty common up here in Va, and I've picked up more than a few over the years. I'm leaning towards Guilford because of the thickness.

[arappaho]

Welcome to the board ghostrecon.
Hope we didn't lose felton in his move.

Joe

[snakewrangler]

There is a professor here at UGA that has dealt mainly with the Missisippian Period, but has a vast knowledge of artifacts. His name is Mark Williams and his email is [e-mail]. If you still have any questions about the point shoot him an email.

[mollala]

Probably a Yuma. Nice find.
I used to always like finding those, the're Early Archaic period, where as the other types of Gulford are middle Archaic.
Greg Perino was the first to id the Guilfords.