# Some of our artifacts & shtuff



## ombudsman (Feb 6, 2010)

Nearly all this stuff has stories that go with it, but, for the most part, I'll spare you.

 The cobble hammer on the left is Anasazi (ancestral Puebloan is, I believe, the PC term now) from S.W. Colorado. The grooved club head is Mogollon (contemporaneous to Anasazi) from west central New Mexico. The pink knife is from Wyoming. The pipe is modern (1970) Red Lake Sioux.

 There is a story connected to the pink knife. Wife and I were hunting artifacts on a village site in the foothills of the Bighorn Mts. From this site there is a beautiful view of the towering Bighorns. I sat down for a rest in kind of a natural seat on a big boulder, while my wife continued hunting. I sat there smoking my pipe, enjoying the view. I idly looked at the ground and noticed some flint chippings. As I focused my attention, I realized that the ground right in front of where I was sitting was covered with a half circle of knapping debatage (probably misspelled that.) It struck me like an electric shock that hundreds of years ago some man sat right where I was sitting and worked on stone tools. COOL!


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## ombudsman (Feb 6, 2010)

Here are some Mogollon pottery shards.


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## ombudsman (Feb 6, 2010)

Mogollon pottery and stone tools. As I said, these are from west central N.M.


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## ombudsman (Feb 6, 2010)

The pottery on the left is Mogollon. The shtuff on the right is from the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles.


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## ombudsman (Feb 6, 2010)

All of this stuff is from the Texas panhandle. It is almost exclusively of Alibates "flint" (actually agatized dolomite,) a material so well suited to knapping that it was traded for hundreds of miles around ever since Clovis times.

 The two teeth in the lower right corner are obviously not Alibates flint. They are Pleistocene (Ice Age) camel teeth found in a cave in W. Oklahoma.


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## ombudsman (Feb 6, 2010)

The metate is Anasazi, the mano, Mogollon. It is quite a coincidence that the mano, from several hundred miles (and a different, though similar culture) fits the metate almost perfectly.


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## ombudsman (Feb 6, 2010)

Not really artifacts, but...

 The baskets are modern Cherokee. The quartz crystal cluster is from Arkansas.


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## ombudsman (Feb 6, 2010)

Ice water crock and demijohn.


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## Rockhounder55 (Feb 6, 2010)

I love the painting on the wall in the second to the last photo. They appear to be pioneers heading along the Emigrant Trail.  ~Mike


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## ombudsman (Feb 6, 2010)

> ORIGINAL:  Rockhounder55
> 
> I love the painting on the wall in the second to the last photo. They appear to be pioneers heading along the Emigrant Trail.Â Â ~Mike


 
 It's a print of one of Albert Bierstadt's most famous paintings. It's so famous I can't remember what it's titled.


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## ombudsman (Feb 6, 2010)

A couple of notes on the second picture:
 1. the dart points at the very front of the drawer are not puebloan. They are from central Oklahoma.

 2. Notice the little red scraper amongst the Mogollon pottery. It too is Mogollon from far western N.M. Notice that it is made of Alibates "flint" from the Texas panhandle, three or four hundred miles away.


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## privvydigger (Feb 6, 2010)

great digs...I wonder do you ever find indian bones?


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## ombudsman (Feb 6, 2010)

> ORIGINAL:  privvydigger
> 
> great digs...I wonder do you ever find indian bones?Â Â


 
 Nearly all of that stuff is surface finds. A friend in western Colorado took me to a pueblo village site on private land where digging was allowed. We didn't find anything in particular that day, except shards, but there were bone fragments all around. At that time (years ago) I would have happily dug a gravesite to get the grave goods. Not now. I don't empathize with the Indian attitudes re. old graves, but I respect them.

 When we lived in N. Dakota, my best friend, on a geology field trip, visited an ancient Mandan village. He found a human skull weathering out of a stream bank. He brought it back and gave it to me. I had it for some years, not thinking too much about it. Then one day I found my daughter and a playmate (they were about 4 years old) playing with it on the carpet. It suddenly struck me that here was a person (so to speak) who had lived a life, a person perhaps far superior to me in one way or another (perhaps in all ways) and his/her skull was being played with by children. I called several tribes in N.D. and Minn., telling them that I had this skull and how would they like me to return it. Without exception, they showed no interest at all and suggested I bury it anywhere. I did.


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## Plumbata (Feb 6, 2010)

Nice stuff man!

 When sitting on the boulder looking at the flintknapping debris, did you happen to be using the peace pipe included in the first image? Was the knife found in the vicinity of your perch?

 Also, on this forum it is rare to see a demijohn with its wicker still intact, hehe. A salute to your restraint. []

 In regards to the human skull discovery, I have seen looted skulls of the Andean "conehead" people sell for over 4,000 bucks on eBay, and even if the skull you had was totally insignificant it would still probably fetch 300-500, but probably more since it was likely a particularly intimate part of a long-gone American native. Not to say that I condone digging and selling human body parts, but it _would_ be lucrative...


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## ombudsman (Feb 6, 2010)

> ORIGINAL:  Plumbata
> 
> Nice stuff man!
> 
> ...


 
 Thanks. No that pipe has only been smoked on a few very special occasions, like when friends we hadn't seen in a long time came to visit. It has never experienced tobacco. []

 Since this area wasn't settled until 1893, the chances of a pontil lurking under the wicker are just about nil. I would just have an amber demi. If I had reason to believe that the bottle would be more beautiful or interesting w/o the wicker I would probably take it off. I did that recently to a 5 gal. carboy with about 30% wicker intact. Man, it looks sooooo much better now.


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## privvydigger (Feb 6, 2010)

I have an Indian skull.  And a picture of him in a coffin at a trading post with Native American Artifacts all around him.  Everything hanging has a pricetag on it.  Wasn't sure how that type of collectable would go over here.  I personally jumped at the chance to get it along with the picture and story.  Gave a good bottle up for it.


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## ombudsman (Feb 6, 2010)

That's interesting, Priv. I'd rather have a good bottle, though.

 I worried that perhaps there are laws concerning possession of human remains. Even if not, I didn't relish the thought of the police hassling me in the process of checking me out about it.


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## Plumbata (Feb 6, 2010)

> ORIGINAL:  ombudsman
> It has never experienced tobacco. []


 
 Attaboy! []


 Privydigger, I would venture a wager that the skull alone is worth a minimum of 800-1,000 bucks since it is a Native, probably much more with the picture which must have had a 1 in 5,000 chance of remaining with the skull all these years. I have a feeling that the bottle you gave up wasn't quite on par with that, so good trade! I am curious about what you said though, how old was the picture? Did someone dig the Indian back up and take the skull, or was the skull itself in the coffin photo? Care to show us an image or 2 of the items (if you aren't worried about being PC, etc.)?


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## surfaceone (Feb 6, 2010)

> Thanks. No that pipe has only been smoked on a few very special occasions, like when friends we hadn't seen in a long time came to visit. It has never experienced tobacco.


 
 Hey David,

 I, for one, would love to see more, closer images of the pipe. Catlinite, isn't it?


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## ombudsman (Feb 6, 2010)

> ORIGINAL:  surfaceone
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 
 Yes, it is catlinite. Thanks for the George Catlin addition to the thread. He is one of my favorite artists. I have studied him some. Thirty years ago I saw some of the prints from his big folio for sale in an antique shop. I think they were like $85 or something like that. I want to kick myself every time I think of that. I deeply regret not buying at least one.

 The pipe was made by a young Sioux. The stem, unfortunately, seems to be made from a piece of sawn wood - maybe started off as a 1X2. I wish he had taken the trouble to make the stem from wild wood. I added the brass tacks, in the style that Indians often used. I'll go take a pic.


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## ombudsman (Feb 6, 2010)

pipe


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## ombudsman (Feb 6, 2010)

pipe


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## ombudsman (Feb 6, 2010)

pipe. Sorry about the dark pictures.


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## ombudsman (Feb 6, 2010)

pipe


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## CanYaDigIt (Feb 6, 2010)

Hmmmm, the bowl on that thing looks recently used.[][&:]


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## ombudsman (Feb 6, 2010)

> ORIGINAL:  CanYaDigIt
> 
> Hmmmm, the bowl on that thing looks recently used.[][&:]


 
 Yeah, about 20 years ago.


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## privvydigger (Feb 7, 2010)

I'll think about it but I don't want to hijack the diggers post.  send me a p.m.


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## Digswithstick (Feb 8, 2010)

Great artifacts and information on them ! There are a lot of bottle collectors who also collect stone artifacts.Did you Lexdigger's post "ancient finds and in-situ " ? Lots of people posted collections there. I do not believe a person has a right to sell some ones bones ,in fact some states if found in collection they can confiscate entire collection and or jail time if pesonal digging is proved .I know i would not like to see my grand fathers skull on e-bay
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 just my opinion .Any way thanks for posting those ,great to see artifacts from different areas.


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## ombudsman (Feb 8, 2010)

> ORIGINAL:  Digswithstick
> 
> Great artifacts and information on them ! There are a lot of bottle collectors who also collect stone artifacts.Did you Lexdigger's post "ancient finds and in-situ " ? Lots of people posted collections there. I do not believe a person has a right to sell some ones bones ,in fact some states if found in collection they can confiscate entire collection and or jail time if pesonal digging is proved .I know i would not like to see my grand fathers skull on e-bay
> 
> ...


 
 Thank you. Yes, I did see the other thread.
 Dave


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## ombudsman (Feb 8, 2010)

I just discovered a horrible mistake. In the first picture, the grooved club head isn't Mogollon. It is (presumeably) Sioux. I found it in western Minnesota. I don't know where my mind was when I called it Mogollon.


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