Spring is coming, and cabin fever is strong among some. For others, the urge to get out and hunt for fossils, arrowheads and spear points is getting stronger by the day. And with good reason! As the ice and snow melt, they can expose fossils and projectiles that were previously hidden to human eyes.
The object below is new to the DMCHS collection and is made of Burlington chert that has been heated in a fire, and then allowed to cool before being worked with bone, stone, and antler tools into its current shape. It has also caused a lot of confusion amongst the experts who have seen it.
There are several sub-types of the Dalton Complex Projectile Points. Not everyone agrees on which sub-types are valid, and which ones are not. Our projectile falls into the grey area in between. One expert thought that it could be an Upper Valley Dalton, or possibly a Northern Valley Dalton, while another thought that it could be a really beaten up Clovis. And. as of the date of this writing, the debate as to whether or not either the UVD or NVD sub types even exist is ongoing.
The Dalton Complex culture are thought to have been a successive culture to the Clovis, who are thought to have been among the first peoples in North America. There are a lot of similarities between Clovis and Dalton lithics (stone projectile points), which can lead to confusion, as is evidenced by our object.
The projectile was likely lashed to an atlatl dart, and was used to hunt game about 10,000 years ago +/- by the Paleo people who were among the first to inhabit Des Moines County. We know that they were hunter-gatherers, and left few traces behind for future archeologists to study. To date, there are no known Dalton or Clovis camp sites in the county.
What is even more confusing about the projectile is that we don’t know who collected it, when they found it, or where. We do know that the projectile is part of a larger collection of lithics and stone/rock samples that were recently donated with no background information. We think that it was collected in Des Moines County, as other similar lithics have been found in the area.
Want to find a similar lithic of your own? The experts recommend walking freshly ploughed fields, or waterways after the spring floods recede. They also stressed that you make sure that you have permission to walk private property when artifact hunting. Also, make sure that if you are hunting public lands, that collecting is allowed.
Want to see objects from Out of the Attic, Ask an Expert, or From the Archives in person? Visit the Heritage Museum and see the rotating display!
Photo Credit: Don Weiss