Hunting here better than there?

[kozman]

Where are the better places to look for artifacts in the US? I would imagine places that where settled more than others. Where the areas that are not very good?

[JoshinMO]

Best places are going to be near springs,cave's and natural lakes but the worse spot's may be flood plain's,mountain peeks and in the middle of large river's. Really, but imagine artifacts could be found anywhere else but possibly one of the 3 places i mentioned to be worse spots. :dunno: 

[gregszybala]

It's amazing where artifacts can be found. As long as there was a source of water close by there were sites. I read an article by an Archy recently about an area just north of me. He states that within one mile of a road in this small town there are 25 known sites!

[JoshinMO]

Good point Greg. I am always hearing that where creeks and rivers intersect are a given to be sites nearby.

[greg blood]

Often people ask me, where to find artifacts,
Artifacts can be found within a days walk of nearly any spot in America
Consider your basic needs, where they could be found without modern convenience,
put yourself in the mindset of the most primitive of situations, how and what you would need for survival,
Consider that most rural areas had at one time denser populations than today .
I always tell people "just look in the dirt" and keep looking, before long you will find something,
and in time you will become more and more confident of what you might find at the first glance of any piece of ground.
My wife and I were once walking a leisure stroll with some visiting family discussing this very same thing,
I told this man that if you look at enough dirt  you will find something, this was a paved city street, and we began checking
bare spots in the grass along the curb and found a complete point in a matter of a few minutes..   LOOK!!
and you will learn where not to look.        Always get Permission!!!!!!!

[garscale]

Yes some places are better than others. For sheer volume of fine artifacts, you must be near an unlimited material source. Central Texas is a great example. The unlimited fine quality Edwards gave the natives the opportunity to practice much more than other areas. Also, it provided the opportunity to make thousands of high quality points to be traded as well as dramatically increased the amount of high grade artifacts a native might posess.
  A few hundeed miles away, the volume of high quality artifacts drastically decreased as only the wealthy owned them and the po folk had to make do with local materials of lesser quality.  In Central Tx,  slightly damaged blade would be discarded where in East tx, the same blade would have been reworked untill there was nothing usable left.

[kozman]

Thanx for the info. Like NASA's mars missions "follow the water". It makes sense. Why would you want to carry water any further than you would have two. I am getting stir crazy. Looking at topo maps. Marking high spots near to water. I even started to make my own physical map layers. Take a topo map print it out. Then several transparent pages. One with just streams and lakes. One with roads. One with land owners.....so I can layer them. Then I found out the cost of transparent sheets!
Just thinking now I can do that on may tablet layering using a paint program. hehehe
Once again thank you all. I am getting so facinated with the early peoples way of live.

[Myrna]

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First post in my life...be gentle...
My story about my area.  37 years ago, as a kid- central northern Alberta Canada, lived on the farm 40 acres of grassland, never worked and still hasn't been, I moved away as a teen.
Bro and dad were damming our feeder creek, for cattle water, pulling rocks out of bank. Bro found a strange rock 5 plus pounds with a central pecked groove, not smooth, dark hard rock with actual pecked knobs for handles From the parent rock! Yes it was special, not water worked, groove not smooth, and not a hammer maul, we don't  think. No way! never seen anything on-line like it, not even close. Museum said probably natural and water tumbled it, etc
I played with it lots, but it was left on the farm when we moved! Sent hand drawn pics to Alberta museum and they said, not native plains artifact, and no real pic so they couldn't say.
Contacted bro other day, and asked if us kids and dad(he's dead) were wrong about rock. In his opinion  he said no way, it was an artifact.
We had found a scraper, and arrow head on the surface of that field, as kids ,without trying, just came across them, as cattle grazed the field short. A mile away is a rise of land that back in the 70's was called 'hunters hill' and the story is  the hill was used to locate game below,
I'm itching now, to go back to the farm and check out the creek and area.
Our creek confluensed into a larger creek that fed Into a large river.
About 10 miles away, as the crow flies was Fort Edmonton, and I believe many natives were located in farm vicinity, and probably traded etc. I just know there's more out there, and super regretful I don't have that rock. The groove was orientated between the handles as if it was held by knobs and scraped up and down. It really was heavy and needed the handles to manipulate it.
Any suggestions as to how to find more goodies?
Yes there are laws about taking stuff in Alberta, I'm aware...
Thanks for reading my first post.
I only have the arrow head, broken tip, and if I figure out how to add pics here from my I phone I will send it.

[gregszybala]

Welcome Myrna. Lots of good info in this thread, other threads and in the info section. Do a bit of browsing and reading on the forums here.
Sounds like the property you grew up on has some great potential. Good luck

[CMD]

:welcome: from RI, Myrna. Great first post! Sorry you lost track of that rock, but looking forward to seeing your photos. Glad you found us.

[SDhunter]

Welcome Myrna.  I hope you find a good spot to hunt.  Get serious about it,  and you'll find artifacts.

[G10+]

Always found mine right were it was lying ....

[chase]

G10 wrote:

Always found mine right were it was lying ....

  :rolf:  :rolf:  :rolf:  G10 I am glag to see a post from you! That statement  is like the last place you look.   Enjoyed the conversation the other day.