My coolest and my oddest finds

Albatrosdva said:

Ok, just for a little background. In undergrad, I was a double major in US History and Anthropology. As such I have some formal training as an archaeologist. I used the digs to train my eye for Native American pottery and that sort of thing. Then I would go down to the river and find stuff. While not technically dug since one was on the surface and one was under water, I consider these my most interesting finds. I grew up in western NC solidly in Cherokee country. You really couldn't dig anywhere without finding something. I found the unknown clay tube in the Tuckasegee River. There was a great spot in the river where a sizeable creek joined the river and all the rock coming down the creek stopped flowing when it met the river. I have several cigar boxes full of pottery shards. I found the tube in this backwater where a small island formed and there was a small stream diverted from the river. I asked the archaeology department and their best guess is a pipe stem. I found the Holloway in a lake that my grandparents lived on in Anderson, SC. Each year in the winter they would drop the lake for repairs to docks or whatever but one year they needed to do repair work to the dam and the water was way lower. It's fun to find a 10,000-year-old point right on the surface. The lake has been there since the 1930s and that constant saturation had gotten rid of the plowzone soil but left the rocks so there were really great features. Little piles of rocks that had been flaked off a preform. Lots of preform rocks and several other finished points.

Sorry for the long explanation. Hope you enjoy.

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Albatrosdva said:

Ok, just for a little background. In undergrad, I was a double major in US History and Anthropology. As such I have some formal training as an archaeologist. I used the digs to train my eye for Native American pottery and that sort of thing. Then I would go down to the river and find stuff. While not technically dug since one was on the surface and one was under water, I consider these my most interesting finds. I grew up in western NC solidly in Cherokee country. You really couldn't dig anywhere without finding something. I found the unknown clay tube in the Tuckasegee River. There was a great spot in the river where a sizeable creek joined the river and all the rock coming down the creek stopped flowing when it met the river. I have several cigar boxes full of pottery shards. I found the tube in this backwater where a small island formed and there was a small stream diverted from the river. I asked the archaeology department and their best guess is a pipe stem. I found the Holloway in a lake that my grandparents lived on in Anderson, SC. Each year in the winter they would drop the lake for repairs to docks or whatever but one year they needed to do repair work to the dam and the water was way lower. It's fun to find a 10,000-year-old point right on the surface. The lake has been there since the 1930s and that constant saturation had gotten rid of the plowzone soil but left the rocks so there were really great features. Little piles of rocks that had been flaked off a preform. Lots of preform rocks and several other finished points.

Sorry for the long explanation. Hope you enjoy.

Click to expand...