I wanted to know how old the lithic artifacts are. Dave told me, "My guess is that those sites were used over the span of many years, perhaps as long ago as 5-8,000 years ago and maybe as recently as several hundred years ago."
The soil at this altitude is thin so there is very little erosion to cover the lithes. Believe it or not, these artifacts are just laying on the ground!
Obstruction Point is over there.
We are on the look out for dacite. Dacite is a stone used to create super sharp arrowheads. The official name for arrowhead is “projectile point”. We are looking for chunks of dacite stone with signs of chipping. They were left behind by the native people hundreds of years ago.
Can you spot the artifact?
How about now?
I’ll get in a little closer.
Here it is!
We spent hours looking and had lots of success.
When we found a lithe, we put a small piece of surveyor tape underneath it.
Then, we bagged it and labeled the bag. We recorded the site location, the date and a number.
Finally, we worked with a surveyor to mark where it sat.
Archaeologist Dave wants to know where – exactly - each artifact was found. He is going to create a 3D map of the site and use the information to learn more about the habits of native people at during that time period.
Dinner time Discussion:
Many people believe that the native people never came up to the mountains. They had plenty of food along the coast. During the two days we worked the Archaeologist Dave we found over 500 artifacts. If there was plenty of food along the coast, why do you think people ventured into the mountains?
