Ancient Digs! + In Situs!

[lexdigger]

Went back to my friend Rob's farm for a weekend visit. We ended up spending the better part of Saturday digging in one of the many rocks shelters on the farm. He's been working on this one for quite a while and has is dug down Deep!!!

Here's Rob and Slim working away.

He has a large portion of the shelter dug down around four feet deep. Other areas are as far as eight feet deep!

He's using a backhoe to haul the sift dirt up and out of the shelter. Has a nice little road cut into it.

Wasn't long before we were finding em! Don't know if you can see it, but there's a point in this screen full of dirt!

Nice little Motley!

Sweet!

Benton.

Snapped base.

Sweet little Palmer!

Nice unifacial scraper.

Some stuff laid out on the screen.

Sweet little point!

A nice shot from inside the shelter. Rob is over six feet tall... he's around eight feet deep in this pic and not bottomed out yet! We're so anxious to see what all comes out of this site, but it will take years to complete this dig.

Hope you all enjoyed seeing some different kind of digging. It is hard work for little rewards, but our love of ancient artifacts keeps us going back for more.

Happy Hunting Diggers!!!

 

[Rockhounder55]

Doesn't it just feel awesome to hold something in your hand that may not have been touched by humans in hundreds or thousands of years?? ~Mike

 

[sandchip]

Great pictures everybody!

 

[CALDIGR2]

EXCELLENT, Chris! I LIKE to see arrowhead diggers at work. It makes me want to return to our killa dig site, but we need a little more rain. CA is rain poor, not like KY.

 

[lexdigger]

Thanks guys. Yeah, nothing compares to the feeling of pulling an ancient artifact out of the ground! It is an intimate connection to our past and helps to put things in perspective a bit. We could sure use some rain around here to. Got a lot of fields to walk if they would just get a good ground pounder!!! Hope to make some decent finds this fall, or at least have fun trying!

 

[RICKJJ59W]

Cool stuff Lex! that cave is awesome to! When the bomb hits you know where to go [8D]
You can have some of our rain.8 inches in one day!Its been raining for 3 days now.

 

[lexdigger]

We'll take it Rick... just bottle it up and send it this way!!! We are lucky here in Kentucky. The Majority of this state sits on top of natural cave systems. When the Big One drops, those in the Know will be safe and sound... underground!
When it's all dug out he plans on making a nice little camping spot out of the rock shelter. It will be a nice get away from the hustle and bustle of the big village!

 

[redbeardrelics]

Wow Lexdigger, That is a sweet spot, awesome points / tools, and some great photos!
You guys and gals are really finding some nice early material under that shelter, and it appears you have plenty more to uncover.
Finding Palmers and other early point types makes me wonder if you will hit a Paleo layer further down? Have you hit bottom, or any sterile layers down deep yet?
I like that snapped base point too, do you think it is a Decataur type? It looks like you also found some bone items while digging, any thoughts on having the starta where they were found carbon dated?
I would love to see a photo of the whole shelter assemblege when you all are finished.

We finally got some heavy rains here in Maryland, about 6 inches at home here last week. Here is a photo of what I have been able to pick up from a local site after the rains, and my hunting buddies have had similar results from the same spot. The grey serrated point in the middle right of the frame is typical of the Palmer type points we can find here, but most of the material shown is late archaic and woodland era.

 

[redbeardrelics]

Closer up photo of some points

 

[Lordbud]

In all my years I've found exactly two Native American artifacts -- a scraper and a hollowed-out tube of rock like a banner stone, very plain in design.