Going Native

Native American artifacts and history has always interested me. It intrigues me that people lived right where I am not too, too long ago in such a very different way from me. My parents are from the Susquehanna valley area of Pennsylvania, and I remember seeing N.A. arrowheads and spear points and other objects that my grandfather had found in the plowed fields of farmers in the area.

I stumbled upon my first [spear] point - the one on the left above - when I was about eight in a vacant lot in my neighborhood. Obviously, I was pretty ecstatic. I continued looking for years when my dad would till up the garden and eventually found the black one above. It was probably 3-4 acres away from where I found the first one. And then I married into a family who evidently had a prime N.A. area on their land in Stokes county (about 30 minutes away from my parents' home). They used to till up the land for a huge garden every spring, and Alan's grandfather told me that he has found quite a few arrowheads and spear points over the years. I used to walk that area after he had tilled it and eventually found the broken spear point in the middle above. Now that area is all covered in grass except for a small area in the back of the yard. For the past few weeks, after we eat dinner with them on Monday or Tuesday nights, Matthew and I have been walking this area and digging around and looking for treasures.

When we went to the Fossil Festival in May, someone there recommended that I get in touch with the anthropology department from Wake Forest University. The boys and I took a visit there to show one of the women what I had found and to get ages of my points. The first one I found (on the left) is from the "Archaic Period" which means it is about 4000 years old. The broken spear point is from the "Early Woodland Period" and is about 2500 years old. And the small, black point (my only "true" arrowhead) is from the "Middle Woodland Period" and is about 1200 years ago. So the two that I found so close together are about 2800 years apart in age. Isn't that fascinating? Makes me want to knock down houses and plow up my parents' neighborhood to see what else I could find...