Archaeologica.org

I read about the internet making knowledge dangerous in here or should i say too little knowledge.
Then i look at a startling collection of pre-clovis artefacts so i show some rather good and easy to identify items sadly though it seems the internet a great teacher when it comes to rare items it skips the basics .As for the pre-clovis items i am sorry ,wish you luck with them but they do not appear to have any of the signs visible that point to them being artefacts.
P.S. I threw in the fossil picture as an idiot check its a mammoth tooth.
cheers Terry.

As for the pre-clovis items i am sorry ,wish you luck with them but they do not appear to have any of the signs visible that point to them being artefacts.

So you're saying none of your specimens are man made, in your opinion?

How was this piece derived:



Have you had a pro look at your specimens? For example, I've had Berkeley, USGS and Lakehead researchers verify the items I'm recovering are artifacts. Do you have some pro's that could examine your specimens?

You may have problems deriving a date for your specimens because there is no dateable material in the flake channels. They could be ten days old or 10,000 years old. Have you documented from where they were recovered? If so, has that strata been dated?

i never said my pieces werent man made what i said was that in simple terms a first year student would be expected to know what they are that never happened in here.
So if you cannot recognize simple artefacts how can you possibly identify some thing as unusaul as pre-clovis???
By the way i am an expert i get paid to authenticate artefacts and give opinions on sites.
And though this may upset some i did go to university i have a B.A. in Archaeology and paleoanthropology in the process of completing masters now also been doing this work for quite a few years.
Silly me maybe i should just have read lots of websites lol.Cheers Terry.

So if you cannot recognize simple artefacts how can you possibly identify some thing as unusaul as pre-clovis???

Who didn't recognize your pieces as man made? Of course, you may have made them.

By the way i am an expert i get paid to authenticate artefacts and give opinions on sites.

So what's your opinion on the assemblage I'm recovering from central Texas, smarty pants. And no, I'm not paying for your opinion.

And though this may upset some i did go to university i have a B.A. in Archaeology and paleoanthropology in the process of completing masters now also been doing this work for quite a few years.

Stuart Fiedel has much better credentials, but he's a pseudo-scientist.
So your point is?

Maybe you should read what i wrote i already gave my opinion but i will repeat it i see no signs that would indicate your pieces man made worked, knapped or otherwise tampered with apart from being taken from off site which means you just lost 90% of any information they can supply.
This is all simple stuff must ask did your experts not tell you any of this???
When you remove artefacts from site we refer to it as destroying because you have just destroyed the value of the site plus the artefact isnt this taught to archaeologists where you live?

Maybe you should read what i wrote i already gave my opinion but i will repeat it i see no signs that would indicate your pieces man made worked

Explain why these aren't man made:



http://www.phpbb88.com/nohandaxesinus/v ... ndaxesinus



http://www.phpbb88.com/nohandaxesinus/v ... ndaxesinus



http://www.phpbb88.com/nohandaxesinus/v ... ndaxesinus

And why this is:

apart from being taken from off site which means you just lost 90% of any information they can supply.

I disagree. We can determine their manufacture date, and thus derive when the people who created these artifacts lived. And many have been photo documented in situ:

http://www.phpbb88.com/nohandaxesinus/v ... ndaxesinus

Also, how do you deal with an alluvium that is being dissected? Do you leave the artifacts in place, where they can wash downstream during the next flood?

I notice the artifacts you're presenting are "off site". Did you document them in situ?

This is all simple stuff must ask did your experts not tell you any of this???

Naaahhh. It's not important yet. Dating first, then formal excavations. The alluvium is loaded with similar artifacts. Berkeley, USGS and Lakehead asked me to send them specimens, which necessitated removing them from the site. But, it appears by your logic, that you’re more qualified to make these calls.

When you remove artefacts from site we refer to it as destroying because you have just destroyed the value of the site plus the artefact isnt this taught to archaeologists where you live?

Naaaahhhh. There are thousands, if not millions of artifacts still in situ. We're actually adding to the value of the site by dating the artifacts, but do you Aussies do dating? Do you have dating for your artifacts that you removed from the site?

If not, then...

Stick around, you might learn a thing or two that's not taught in school.

When Charlie posts a photo of a stone he gives us all 4 sides. You might emulate that idea, Fossil.

Much of this debate was over my head, the one item of FTs I would have bet money on as being manufactured at some time, but I stayed out because I'm not really qualified to comment.
But what I will say is that if Charley had left his tools at home I would still doubt that Clovis was first.
I accept FTs hard line viewpoint as being a good approach, but I have to say it would be perhaps fairer if he were to visit the site in question would it not, till he does I have to respect the opinions of those who have and await results.

Digit wrote:I accept FTs hard line viewpoint as being a good approach, but I have to say it would be perhaps fairer if he were to visit the site in question would it not, till he does I have to respect the opinions of those who have and await results.

Hello again, Roy and Charlie by the way.
Just here to echo this comment really. I sometimes thing we need a bit more scepticism around here (he said having not been around here for a while) but at the same time, Charlie's been out there getting his hands dirty and has posted about a million pictures on this site and speaking as someone who's experience with this particular subject is entirely based on sitting in front of a computer - some look like rocks, but there's been so many that I just can't dismiss the idea of some of these things having been worked. In fact, it seems to me very likely that many of CH's finds were worked - for what that's worth. I've actually got a related question but I think I might be better off putting it under a new thread.

Just here to echo this comment really. I sometimes thing we need a bit more scepticism around here

Agreed, War.

And there has been a healthy dose of skepticism here concerning the central Texas artifacts, especially in the beginning. Some are no-brainers, which most can discern and then there are those that have more subtle signs of working.

I remember when I first started posting some of the finds, Min had this to say:

Sometime, Charlie, you have to do an experiment for me.

Take a big piece of flint and drop it from a cliff, as if it had broken off and fallen naturally. Then, sift through the resulting debris and see if anything looks like any of those tools you have there.

I still share Leona's skepticism that sometimes a rock is just a rock until someone picks it up and uses it as a hammer.

So is anybody suggesting that Charley should stop his work? IMO it would be better to be wrong AFTER excavation than to say 'forget it, there's nothing pre Clovis, you're wasting your time.'

It's important to remember that Charlie is not 'excavating' anything. He is investigating an eroding hillside and picking up these stones from the surface. There is no "context" any more than there is a context to the dirt fill that Herod the Great used to pack the inside of his Temple Mount retaining walls.

As he notes above, I was initially skeptical but having seen the site there are billions of nice rounded river rocks such as I would be proud to have as part of my landscaping system....and every so often there is one that stands out like a sore thumb.

There are no "cliffs" in the area from which a stone could fall and break. The creek is the moving force. That, or human intervention.

Minimalist wrote:It's important to remember that Charlie is not 'excavating' anything. He is investigating an eroding hillside and picking up these stones from the surface. There is no "context" any more than there is a context to the dirt fill that Herod the Great used to pack the inside of his Temple Mount retaining walls.

As he notes above, I was initially skeptical but having seen the site there are billions of nice rounded river rocks such as I would be proud to have as part of my landscaping system....and every so often there is one that stands out like a sore thumb.

There are no "cliffs" in the area from which a stone could fall and break. The creek is the moving force. That, or human intervention.

That said:

Kuenen deserves careful consideration, for he
conducted exhaustive studies and concluded that streams
lacked the force necessary to produce flaking-indeed, had
only about 10% of the energy required to produce flaking
in the archeological sense.

http://cayman.globat.com/~bandstexas.com/Timlin.b


KUENEN, PH. H. 1956. Experimental abrasion of pebbles. 2. Rolling
by current. Journal of Geology 64:336-68.

Like many people Charley, I can knap a piece of flint, most of the lads where I was raised could do so as flint was so common it was used to build houses!
I am no where near as could as some people I have seen on TV, but I feel that a better understanding as to what passed as tool would be arrived at if we were stop worrying about how to knap a tool and concentrated instead on using them.
Most flint tools seem to me to have been used to manufacture other tools, digging sticks, spear shafts, needles, and probably a lot of perishable artifacts that have been lost to us.
Try some of the stuff you have recovered, and who says that man didn't use stone that had been broken naturally anyway?

One of the experiments we tried was taking a big piece of quartz-like rock and using it to bash a piece of chert.

The "hammer" broke...the "nail" was just fine. Fracturing these hard stones "naturally" would take a lot of force and the only natural force I can think of is gravity. As I said above, it is an area of soft rolling hills. There are no cliffs like we have here in Arizona.