In the Lilies

Unbelievably I found this arrowhead while cleaning the front flower beds. I was clearing away last years lily debris, and this little guy fell out into my hand. I was so surprised- but also skeptical- see K loves arrowheads, and looks for them as much as he can- which is not much these days, but he and N had just gone out looking for arrowheads together that morning, and had found none, but I thought maybe he'd planted this one there for me to find.

I asked him later and he said an emphatic no, he would never risk me not finding it and losing it forever- (he's occasionally found an arrowhead while looking with someone who has never found one- and left it there for them to find- but it's always tough to find it again, and that's a pretty big risk for someone who treasures these points). Also he didn't really know that I'd planned to clean that flower bed so it would have been a giant risk.

He figures this point is a re-shaped pelican lake point which makes it about 3500 years old. He also says that most people would class it as a much younger besant point, but the curved base and distinct side notches, plus the asymmetric tip- means that it was likely much longer, then broke, and was re-shaped to use again. This makes sense because it's made of knife river flint- which is not native to this area, so it would have been traded for and valued, and you wouldn't rally want to toss it, if it could be salvaged.

We know that this area is a good one for artifacts, we find the odd flake, and K knows quite a bit about this stuff, (ancient artifacts are his first love) so he's found a lot of points, and scrapers, and axes, and hammers, and pottery sherds over the years. I usually find points pretty randomly, mostly after I've gotten fed up and say I'm done with looking, as I'm walking back to the truck, I'll come across a perfect point. It seems like hard work- the way that K looks for points, and it seems like a rare gift when you find them as randomly as I do.

I know that the spot around our house has been populated for thousands of years, but I never really thought that through before. What boggles my mind about finding this point- is that thousands of years ago, in the exact spot I'm sitting right now, some guy shot at an animal, missed, and lost the point. He probably spent a lot of time looking for it-he'd just re-shaped it after all,  then realized it was almost supper or something and time to walk back to camp- so he gave it up as lost- and it was, until it fell out in my hand, while I was weeding the lilies.