My best surface find ever!!

[SGT.Digger]

I believe this is a Madison? Also found another neat point not sure on type along with an awl or wood working tool. Looked like a preform but possibly a perforator ect. 35pcs of pottery as well . All surface finds .

[SurfaceHunter]

Nice, location?

[SGT.Digger]

Tennessee

[smbore]

Nice stuff.

[redrocks]

Nice finds Sarge....the triangle looks like a Hamilton ....if you look on projectilepoints.net

[SGT.Digger]

Ty red rocks I’ll post a couple similar points one was a surface find and another found digging in same shelter. I’m not real familiar with points in Tennessee yet

[utilized flake]

Killer triangle there..! How did the shovel not break that thing? So awesome to find a sharp arrow point like that! Consider me jealous.

[paohrocks]

That is an excellent triangle, looks like you had fun.

[Tam]

That is a great find . Agree with surface hunter you are on a great site .
once you find pottery it seems more always comes .

[SurfaceHunter]

Needle tip on that point

[PointHound]

Don't come across them like that to often. Nice!!! addition to the collection.

[SGT.Digger]

Killer triangle there..! How did the shovel not break that thing? So awesome to find a sharp arrow point like that! Consider me jealous.

Was going to dig out front of shelter because was too wet inside to dig. Decided to search left side with a brighter light(it’s dark in there) and all I had to put pottery on was shovel.

[SGT.Digger]

Nice finds Sarge....the triangle looks like a Hamilton ....if you look on projectilepoints.net

Here’s 3 that came from here are they typologically the same ? Hamilton’s? The one on far left is missing a corner, they all seem similar enough but maybe they could only make them as the flint would let them? Or maybe all are different idk.

[clovisoid]

Awesome stuff. Mississippian Triangle is probably the most accurate name, in my opinion, for your points. You could split them into a couple of types, and find a pictures of Hamiltons, Madisons, and a Ft Ancient triangle that matches each of them nearly perfectly, but I think yours were likely all made by the same group of people or even the family depending on how big the shelter is.

More detail & my opinion:

Some of the multitude of triangles were originally named by archaeologists for specific sites groups of people because that's what archaeologists did back in the 1950's & 1960's. Now that we can see tens of thousands of points from basically the Mississippi River drainage and the Eastern US they all seem to represent basically the same style of point that was probably hafted in a certain way.

Most archaeologists involved with Mississippian archaeology have also moved on from trying to individually type these triangle points, but it seems like many of us collectors are still trying to sort them in to specific named types. (And maybe Madison should be that basic name since it's the one that most people recognize.)

You'll see people split the hairs with descriptions like twice as long as wide, incurvate sides, strait base, ears are angled at a 30 degree angle, etc., but you can find lots of documented caches of these points with the multitude of 'styles' carried by one person in a quiver... Maybe they carried one of each our type, but I think it's more like they just didn't see much difference between them.

For reference-

Madison points were originally defined as coming from one county in Illinois (where tens and tens of thousands of small triangle points have been found.) Later it was changed to having been made by what we call the Oneota people, and exported to other sites in Illinois, Minnesota, and Iowa. And then later that was extended to Cahokia sites because they couldn't identify a difference between Madison points and points found at Cahokia. Ft Ancient points were made by the Ft. Ancient peoples. The Dallas phase triangle was named for the Citico, Tomotley & Toqua sites near the Tennessee River. The same goes likely goes for Fresno, Hamilton, Clarksville, Caraway, Caborn, Roanake, Sanders, Camp Creek, and probably dozens of other triangles from the late Woodland and Mississippian periods.

If you could read or scan all of the archaeological reports on Woodland & Mississippian sites, you would probably come up with hundreds of proposed names for triangles that were only used by one archaeologist (or a couple if they had students trained on the naming convention.)

[sailorjoe]

Hi C. and good day to ya. Looks like a discussion we got into a few years ago before your hiatus.Seems like we may have some small areas of disagreement but not enough to confuse SGTDigger and other folks who are following this thread or for us to quibble about. But I disagree that Woodland triangle is the most accurate description. We can be more specific than that. The Madison style is so widespread and commonplace that I prefer to call them all Madisons. I believe that a Madison is a Madison regardless of where it is found. Just like a Decatur is a Decatur no matter where it is found, not only just the ones found at the type site.And there are enough difference in some of the "basic" Woodland triangles that it is helpful to those very interested in typology to know what is found. In my former collection I had 50 Madisons, 22 Hamiltons, 25 Ft. Ancients,11 Sand Mt, and 12 Camp Creek points, all personal finds.If one is collecting in an area where different styles are known to exist, such as where Digger is hunting, it seems that knowing specifically what is found may be interesting, or maybe not. Hamilton points being associated with a certain focus in East TN are found over a wide area. The Madison style is found over a larger area. I am not a real "hair splitter" but perhaps more of one than you.

[redrocks]

Hey Sarge ...that is an awesome synopsis/summary on woodland triangles by Clovisoid..so many triangles named by different archaeologists is splitting g hairs on similar types in overlapping regions.. ....originally you asked me if I thought Madison ...and I said Hamilton..which I still like them as. ...and being found in the same cave I do think they were made by the same group of people ...the makers of Hamiltons paid close attention to symmetry as two of yours display With the slightly concave base...and Hamiltons are primarily found in the Tennessee River valley..,..find more man..... Red