Hello Again & What Do You Think This Is?

[Walk in the Forest]

Hello again community! I’m up on Nantucket Island and while walking the beach on the East side of the island I found this interesting little rock. Are there any members here familiar with the arrowheads and points here on the island? And if so, could this be one? I found this while walking near the bottom of the eroding cliff at Sankaty Beach Club Beach. I’ve included a pic pointing to the location where it was found here on the island. It is roughly 2.5” long. Here’s hoping it could be some ancient Wampanoag artifact!

I would love any information!

[tomclark]

I'm seeing purposeful work on it. Am not familiar with your material. Good eye if that beach is loaded with other rocks!

[Tam]

Does look like work in the edges and the way you are holding it looks like a flat bottom .
tumbled bey the sea you loose detail . If flat could be a scrapper

[Walk in the Forest]

Tam, yes, it is flat On rhe bottom! So probably human made but pretty beat up? My only other two finds were very water-worn knives. So maybe something like that?

[Tam]

I believe so .

[Hoss]

Utilized flake in my opinion. A lot of material up your way does not weather well. Especially when found on the coast. Wave action and sand do a number on artifacts made of rhyolites and argillite. Nice little find glad you got out for a walk about.

[Jethro355]

Looks like it has purposeful flaking(very purposeful) that has been water worn over a long period, that looks like a very hard stone.

I’d call that a score.👍

[Walk in the Forest]

Thanks you sooo much for all your responses. This might be an unanswerable query but I was curious with something like this if it is possible to ascertain around about when it was made by its appearance? I’m curious if it is left behind by a more contemporary Native American population or is it perhaps
more Archaic, perhaps even when Nantucket was still contiguous with the mainland, which I believe was around 5000 years ago? It all intrigues me so much imagining just how long ago it could have been created!

[Hoss]

You would need to find more artifacts in context with that blade in order to assume a time line. Given it was a beach find it could be 400 , 4000 , 12,000 or anyplace in between .
Storms have whipped stuff around the beaches for eons the changes in geography in the North Atlantic and LI sound are immeasurable due to storm surge. I am sure there have been studies but no one being there to document it it is all theory. Science can recreate models based on data gained in recorded time events but do they really know exactly why? ?? LOL

[Hal Gorges]

Glad to see your excitement, wife and I lived in Charleston in 60 -61-62 when in Navy, we loved all the history that town had to offer.welcome from Florida..

[Jethro355]

I don’t know if I have, so I’ll go ahead and do it now. Thank you for your service. I still stand for the flag and the anthem, because of men like you, I’m able to. Thanks a million.

[Cecilia]

Forest, know you from Charleston, my absolute favorite-est southern city, just up the road a bit from favorite southern beach on Edisto Island. Edisto home many fossils, artifacts, especially those made of shell. Beach finds’ extra weathering really softens work scars. So, with only my limited experience, I look for signs of man’s hand other than scarring, like whether cortex knocked away evenly/uniformly/all the way around, whether shape distinct/unnatural, whether edges have trace serrations. (Some lithics serrate when knapped, whether or not by knapper’s design).

Shape, how shape created, size, material, etc. all very important in determining when made; “typology”, system of correlating specific physical attributes with specific time periods, is how (besides scientific laboratory testing) know age of projectile points. This was hard lesson for me to accept, coz I very verbally expressed resentment towards folksy names assigned to types. There are several comprehensive books on typology, including one seems most popular here, “Overstreet’s “.

Generally speaking, the older the point, the bigger its size. (Way before small, delicate, true arrowheads made, the predecessor “arrows” to which points affixed were much larger spears. History of “real“ arrowheads tiny, short part of very, very long incredible history of projectile points!)

[Hoss]

I am not sure how this topic went from Nantucket to Charleston? Figured I would mention Walk in the forest made her find on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts .

[Hoss]

Your fine CC I just was wondering how we got all the way to Charleston from Nantucket Island in a few short sentences. Charleston sure is a pretty city and loaded with history too.

[Hal Gorges]

Walk In the Forest has Charleston, S,Carolina..as location..

[Hoss]

I see that now that you have mentioned it Hal but she has a map of Nantucket Island as the find location. It threw me off. I was just wondering how we got from way up there down to Charleston LOL Now you showed me how. Thanks for the eye opener. I appreciate it.