WASTE NOT, WANT NOT
The feature that will set the micro tools apart will be size. The system of forming blades and making use of the cortex cap and scraps will not change due to the smallness of the blades. The recovery of over a thousand small tools at the Florida beach sites, along with several hundred at the Pearl River site, added much to our knowledge of the travel of skills. As they were being developed by early man, their relationship in time and use, to clay balls, gave us a second clock to work by.
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It is clear that the tool makers at the Jake Town site and other sites in the Mississippi valley, related to the Poverty Point site made their small tools in a predetermined fashion. After the fashioning of the blade the end referred to as the boring or perforating end was added to the stone. As can be observed, material was removed from each side to the tools working end. A small feature true, but one that is repeated, over and over. Like fins on as Cadillac, these were the signature of Jake Town tools. A few Jake Town tools. After several decades of recovering micro tools at the Alligator Lake site in Northwest Florida, the Pecos encountered a zone that yielded tools that matched the secondary chipping common with the Jake Town tools. This discovery was exciting, as it was one more artifact that proved the relationship between the two areas of the Gulf Coast. Florida and the Lower Mississippi Valley had been in contact, their crafts could be expected to have travelled as well. But the Pecos had been recovering micro tools for those past decades, if they did not resemble Jack Town tools, what were they? To avoid confusion, but to allow me a better chance to offer samples of uniform color and size, I have offered tools and material recovered from the Sonora desert. This part of the state of Sonora lies along the west shores of the Gulf of California. Their age is barely prehistoric. But their manufacture is identical to that used by early man in Florida. Just think a skill used 3,000 BP and discarded, being reinvented over a thousand miles and a thousand years apart. The non Jake Town micro tools being recovered at the Florida site, were similar only in the fact that they were being worked from blades, and their relationship to clay balls and fiber tempered pottery. At the request of the Curator of the Florida State University Museum, I classified and published a paper on these tools. As with the Jake Town tools the majority of these tools seemed to have been intended to bore or perforate. Some were intended to be used as scrapers and some were so small as to be questionable in their use. But it was the discovery of a new area of micro tools that gave Florida artifacts it's greatest mystery. After the passing of a local hurricane, one that reshaped many of the local sand dunes, and removed the small mounds of sand accumulted at one of the beach sites, that the first of many new tools were recovered. If such a term can be used, these were micro - micro tools. While the Jake Town tools and the Florida tools were frequently less than an inch in size, we now were recovering tools that were less than the size of a grain of rice. They were a uniform 7 mm. in length. In time almost one hundred of these micro - micro tools were recovered. Additionally a nearby site began yielding a group of slightly larger tools. These a grand 10 mm in length. It is only with the aid of a magnifying glass that one can identify these tools as having been worked. The suggestion of they being scrap is dismissed by their being fully worked, both ends and each side, the fact that both sets of tools are also uniform in size and shape. It is the shape of the larger micro - micro tools that can not be discarded. They are made with a large, for them, base, and a pointed distal. Oddly, even with these two sites being less than 50 feet apart, the styles do not mix among the sites. This can best be considered evidence that the two sites are of different times. At the beach sites this is the common, small sites that were occupied for periods of rest, rest required from long trips east and west. In addition to the beach sites in Northwest Florida there was a micro tool site located next to the nearby bay. At Four Mile Point on the eastern shores of Choctawatchee Bay, several hundred small tools of a unique pattern were recovered. As the banks of the bay eroded back each several dozen of these tools were recovered. It need be pointed out that this site was far from a bay or river two thousand years earlier. Today's erosion of bay's sandy banks is unrelenting. Thus the story of these tools, their relationship, is now a mystery, one lost for ever. Unlike other micro tools these leave little doubt as to their use. While all but a few are damaged, the original form and use is clear. These were drills. Unlike the beach tools, these were made using flakes. With this fact we must consider the possibility they are from a different time, and their relationship to the late archaic micro tools is unlikely. Like the tools recovered at the Sonora sites, they may at best be a parallel. the bay tools. So we have a look into the life of tone tools made in the Southwest United States and some small bits of stone art recovered in the Southeast. It is hoped that we have guided the average point hunter to begin to look a bit harder as you may be stepping on the best of your finds.
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STOP
Is that broken point, just a discarded distal end, or the base of a
cast off point? Just old junk,
or is it one of the more common of the stone artrifacts? A tool, a rarely
noted recyled bit of early man trash.
Yes sir, take a second look, there were
times good stone was hard to come by for man, at least the type he wanted,
and
we will see that many times the old point was all set to get that final
wee bid of chipping to make the tool to do the job.
I was amazed by the result of sorting out the reworded points for this paper. I had forgotten of the years just how common it was to recover old points that had been reworked. While most had been made into tools there were some that were put back into service as points.
The range of tools these old discards were to see new life as was almost equal to the average stone tools recovered. Man was not going to waste good stone if he could find a use for it.
We are now going to display several of these saved from the dead
points, once you see them you may want to say "Darn,
I tossed one just like that".Tools from points
In fact it may pay to take a close look at that odd colored point you recovered.
Did you know that stone rusts? That's right, rusts. We call the process
patinating, but it still is a stone rusting.
Take any stone that has had a long history of exposure to the sun, a
river cobble will do.
Break off that cortex cap.
Oh yes, the cortex, cortex is rust. What we will see is the bright
interior of our cobble. At one time the total rock glistened as the
interior does now. But over time and exposure to the sun, the exterior
formed a skin or rust we now call the cortex.
While rare, the recovery of a tool or point may offer a small story of
it's history. The day may come when you will see a artifact that has
two colors in the flaking. What you may have is a salvaged point. A
damaged point, maybe the distal end had been snapped off. Discarded
by man it lay exposed to the bright Florida sun. In time, maybe after
a few centuries, this old point began to rust.
A white chert of our point had become a faint yellow.
The many years of patinating had begun. As luck
would have it, a hand of early man picked it up. A
few well placed blows and some secondary chipping and
our old point was as good a new. But now it displays
two colors. And it tells of two histories.
I hope you will find this a useful paper in your hunt
for the history of early man. Just keep in mind, it may
have been many years past that your artifacts were made,
but the man that made them was human.
You did good, now lets go home.
Is that broken point, just a discarded distal end, or the base of a cast off point? Just old junk, or is it one of the more common of the stone artrifacts? A tool, a rarely noted recyled bit of early man trash.Yes sir, take a second look, there were times good stone was hard to come by for man, at least the type he wanted, and we will see that many times the old point was all set to get that final wee bid of chipping to make the tool to do the job. I was amazed by the result of sorting out the reworded points for this paper. I had forgotten of the years just how common it was to recover old points that had been reworked. While most had been made into tools there were some that were put back into service as points. The range of tools these old discards were to see new life as was almost equal to the average stone tools recovered. Man was not going to waste good stone if he could find a use for it. We are now going to display several of these saved from the dead points, once you see them you may want to say "Darn, I tossed one just like that".Tools from points In fact it may pay to take a close look at that odd colored point you recovered. Did you know that stone rusts? That's right, rusts. We call the process patinating, but it still is a stone rusting. Take any stone that has had a long history of exposure to the sun, a river cobble will do. Break off that cortex cap. Oh yes, the cortex, cortex is rust. What we will see is the bright interior of our cobble. At one time the total rock glistened as the interior does now. But over time and exposure to the sun, the exterior formed a skin or rust we now call the cortex. While rare, the recovery of a tool or point may offer a small story of it's history. The day may come when you will see a artifact that has two colors in the flaking. What you may have is a salvaged point. A damaged point, maybe the distal end had been snapped off. Discarded by man it lay exposed to the bright Florida sun. In time, maybe after a few centuries, this old point began to rust. A white chert of our point had become a faint yellow. The many years of patinating had begun. As luck would have it, a hand of early man picked it up. A few well placed blows and some secondary chipping and our old point was as good a new. But now it displays two colors. And it tells of two histories. I hope you will find this a useful paper in your hunt for the history of early man. Just keep in mind, it may have been many years past that your artifacts were made, but the man that made them was human.
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You did good, now lets go home.