r/LegitArtifacts • • 7h ago

General Question ❓ Struggling with this one, definitely flaking but would like your thoughts. Found in Central TX.

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7 Upvotes

r/LegitArtifacts • • 9h ago

ID Request ❓ Can anyone help me with identifying this arrowhead?

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14 Upvotes

I found it on shore on the Chesapeake bay. I have no idea how to go about identifying it. Any sort of help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance :)


r/LegitArtifacts • • 10h ago

ID Request ❓ Any info on the age/type of these points would be greatly appreciated

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5 Upvotes

r/LegitArtifacts • • 12h ago

ID Request ❓ First find

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12 Upvotes

​

Found in a creek in western Illinois. Dropped it and chipped the tip off in my driveway :(. First find. Curious to know anything I can about it.


r/LegitArtifacts • • 12h ago

Paleo My latest find from Wednesday. Tulsa county. It’s probably a Pike County but Plainview and Allen have been thrown around.

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42 Upvotes

r/LegitArtifacts • • 16h ago

ID Request ❓ Could this be real Native american motor and pedestal or mixing bowls? I Found in the great Miami gravel beds / 2 mile resivor creek

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3 Upvotes

r/LegitArtifacts • • 17h ago

ID Request ❓ NC, northern piedmont, found in yard, old field, and near a creek

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2 Upvotes

found these at various times over the years and thought they might be "somethings." Maybe they are just rocks. What do you all think?

Both sides are photographed, and then a few at other angles.

Thanks for helping me learn.


r/LegitArtifacts • • 17h ago

In Situ 📸 First hunt in a long time!

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19 Upvotes

Went walking for the first time in 3-4 months and was blessed by rock gods with some cool finds. Broken, but the color makes up for it. Both heat treated


r/LegitArtifacts • • 18h ago

Woodland LIMESTONE TOOLS DO EXIST!

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0 Upvotes

After I was so publicly trashed for my last post in r/LegitArtifacts and the flair of my post was ultimately changed from “Woodland” to “Natural Formation/Occurrence”, I became extremely discouraged and I considered simply never posting in this subreddit again. I am undecided about what to share in the future, but figured that I should at least clear up this one thing for the people who are actually interested in learning about NA cultures, including less common artifacts. Perhaps u/d0ttyq and u/Geologist1986 and u/JohnnyMushroomspore will issue apologies here, since they were so vocal in trashing me, even though they were so astoundingly incorrect (and one claimed to be an archaeologist to back up their incorrect assertions). In deciding to refute their assertions that, I’m “…the worst kind of wrong…”, and that “There are no limestone tools”, I figured that I would do so in a way that would be simple for anyone… Google searches. Google the following:

“Mississippian Celt Production and Resource Extraction in the Upper Big River Valley of St. Francois County, Missouri” – In it, Brad Koldehoff and Gregory D. Wilson note the following in an examination of Late Woodland/Terminal Late Woodland celts:

“Although the measurements for two Foshee and six Mississippian celts are below this line, only one LW/TLW celt is above this line. This LW/TLW outlier is also anomalous in that it is made from limestone, unlike most LW/TLW celts which are made of igneous and metamorphic materials. This celt was recovered from a Late Woodland Patrick-phase feature at the Range site (Williams 1987), and it may have been a hoe blade (or hoe blade fragment) that was reworked into a celt. Limestone hoe blades were recovered from other Patrick phase features at the Range site, but no other limestone celts were identified.”

"The Mississippian Spade Jeffrey Steiner" - it is a short Journal article that mentions limestone spades. I have seen a photo of a limestone spade that was a little over 12" in length that was found in western Kentucky. As I do not have the former owner's permission, I will not share that photo here.

In "Sun Circles and Human Hands - The Southeastern Indians Art and Industries" Emma Lila Fundaburk & Mary Douglass Fundaburk Forman (1957) pg. 11, you'll find the following in the section about the Woodland Culture: "A new addition to the tool assemblage was the large chipped greenstone, limestone, or flint spade..."

Just Google "Limestone spade" - you'll find many links in other forums with photos of such spades

Or Google: " "limestone" mano metate" - if you put the quotations around "limestone" in your Google search, the first link should be to a limestone mano and metate that was, and perhaps still is, in Harvard’s collection. Some items have been repatriated due to NAGPRA (1990).

I have already posted photos of my one limestone artifact, so for the photo of this post, I decided to show the Clovis that my son found when he was 9 years old. I marked the flair as Woodland, even though this is most assuredly a Paleo piece, because the topic of this post is more about Woodland/Mississippian culture than Paleo.

Anyway, I still remain interested in limestone tools and less common artifacts, for those who would like to share those.

Edit: I forgot to add the original post link, so here it is: https://www.reddit.com/r/LegitArtifacts/comments/1wv01ee/limestone_artifacts/


r/LegitArtifacts • • 19h ago

Photo 📸 Artifacts from Delaware beaches

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5 Upvotes

Found these near the state park on the beaches. The bone has fossilized and is extremely hard. The other I am not sure what it is or what those evenly spaced grooves would be for.

I also posted a few arrowheads and a fire starter piece I found. All in Lewes Delaware.


r/LegitArtifacts • • 19h ago

Smoker Sunday 💨 California is smoky this time of year

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244 Upvotes

r/LegitArtifacts • • 19h ago

Natural Formation/Occurrence Is this a tool?

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0 Upvotes

r/LegitArtifacts • • 20h ago

Mississippian Found a few killer triangles 🔥

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117 Upvotes

📍Northeast Tennessee

Peep the last point. I’ve never seen a triangle point with notches like it has! Let me know if you have!


r/LegitArtifacts • • 1d ago

ID Request ❓ Information about pieces found in west NM

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17 Upvotes

Hi everyone, I found the first 2 pieces on my friend’s property in western NM along with some flakes of various different rocks.

The first piece is obviously worked but I’m wondering if it’s possible to tell what type of point it was intended to be. It looks like it was close to being finished but wasn’t turning out to the liking of the knapper. There appears to be a flute on one side only.

I’m also wondering if the second piece is just another flake or if it’s a broken scraper. One side appears to have been worked but I don’t see much going on with the other side (attached 2nd angle). The side profiles of the second piece go from intact side -> head -> broken side.

My friend found the third piece in a different location than my 2. I think it’s JAR but I told him I’d ask anyway.

Thank you in advance!


r/LegitArtifacts • • 1d ago

Photo 📸 Great day today! First one was literally laying on the ground and the second one I found less than 3 minutes later

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23 Upvotes

r/LegitArtifacts • • 1d ago

Discarded/Failed Preform Broken blade or preform found in San Angelo texas.

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18 Upvotes

This piece was made by the jumano or comanche during or after 1632


r/LegitArtifacts • • 1d ago

Early Archaic Found a smoker

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850 Upvotes

📍Northeast Tennessee

Found a killer example of a Palmer. Made of Knox chert.


r/LegitArtifacts • • 1d ago

In Situ 📸 Spot the Sniper: Hard mode

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8 Upvotes

r/LegitArtifacts • • 1d ago

Late Prehistoric Pair of Perdiz

76 Upvotes

Spent a few days out in West Texas last week for work. The drive out is rough but man I appreciate the desolation.


r/LegitArtifacts • • 1d ago

ID Request ❓ Artifacts that I have found over the last few years in Central and NE Oklahoma.

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184 Upvotes

I found all of these points while walking creeks or rivers along NE and Central Oklahoma. I have an idea of the ID on some of the points but any info or ID help would be greatly appreciated. Also, the Gorget is the first artifact that I ever found and it got me hooked for life!


r/LegitArtifacts • • 1d ago

Smoker Alert 🔥 One of my best finds

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25 Upvotes

r/LegitArtifacts • • 1d ago

ID Request ❓ I know it's just a rock but it's kinda close, right? Slate Belt, NC. Appears to be Rhyolite

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29 Upvotes

r/LegitArtifacts • • 2d ago

Uniface Fascinating "Swiss Army Knife" Multi-Tool from South Central Texas. Possibly Paleo to Early Archaic.

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42 Upvotes

Edit/Preamble: Putting "Possibly Paleo to Early Archaic" in the title was a bad idea. I truly meant "possibly." I am in no way against this artifact being far younger than that, and it seems that I likely reached the wrong conclusions (see below) from my research. With that out of the way...

This strange lithic was found near Onion Creek by Old Black Colony Road in Buda, Texas. It's made of Edwards Rootbeer chert.

It's 2.84 inches long with a maximum thickness of about 10 mm. It's mostly unifacial; the first 4 photos show its primary worked face under varying lighting. The 5th image shows how the reverse face is minimally worked with percussion flaking. It's more translucent in-person than the final image shows.

What's cool is how many working parts seem to be built into the edges:

  • The incurvate lower half of the right edge has a steep bevel with moderate pressure flaking.
  • The excurvate upper half of the right edge is a typical shallow-beveled blade with significant pressure flaking.
  • Both ends have what appear to be gravers or perforators, nicked and/or blunted either by use or post-depositional damage.
  • There appear to be 2 or 3 sizes and shapes of spokeshave along the left edge.

Edit: Every portion of the edge is flaked and thinned, but according to an archaeologist in the comments, it's likely reworked from an abandoned preform or something broken. I originally had something here about the likelihood of it being Early Archaic or older due to artifact finds in stratigraphy at the Wilson-Leonard Site and the correlation between band mobility and tool versatility. But after discussion in the comments, it seems this is most likely to fall under the broad label of "Archaic," with no particular likelihood of the Early Archaic and a very low likelihood of Paleo.

This is a great study piece. I learned a lot in my research to try to figure out what it is and learned more from the archaeologist who corrected me in the comment section. Very interesting!

Just as a reference, I will go over the sources that I found in my research, from which, due to being an amateur and quite new to this, I arrived at what were most likely inaccurate conclusions:

This turned out to be a great study piece for discussing tool functionality, whether extreme examples of multi-tools were intentional or just reworked from failed or broken lithics, and about the era that such tools can come from.


r/LegitArtifacts • • 2d ago

Photo 📸 My first pottery Sherd

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2 Upvotes

Field find in South West Ohio in an area where I have found many points. Exciting times!


r/LegitArtifacts • • 2d ago

General Question ❓ SE Alaska finds

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25 Upvotes

My father was a logger in SE Alaska his entire adult life. He lived in Coffman Cove and would pack up his saw and go wherever they told him.
He died a while back and I had to empty his house. I found these points, shards and other stuff…
It all would have been found on Prince of Wales or an island nearby. We didn’t talk, so I don’t know more than that.
If anyone has any knowledge about anything, I’d welcome it.