[quote:="nyattnyatt"]

I found this yesterday in Napa. I think it is a milk-chocolate colored chert Lake Mojave point. I've found nothing else like it. This is the first chert point I have seen in this land of obsidian artifacts. Can anyone confirm?
Thanks!

Pretty piece. 8-)

Is it bifacial? :?

Will you take a shot of the other side?

yes it is. It is beautifully worked:

yes it is. It is beautifully worked:

Sure is. Wish I could help you with the identification, but I'm only familiar with Texas stuff. :?

I'm sure someone familiar with the California sequence will weigh in.

It is consitent with flaking (usually a parallel, steep retouch) and profile with the converging , convex-based Lake Mojave series of bifaces. I use the term, of Bedwell (1973), of "Western Pluvial Lakes Tradition," (also the Stemmed Point Tradition of Carlson [1983]) as this is a morphology of bifaces found along former shorelines of dessicated pluvial lakes, dating to the terminal Pleistocene, in the reion of the Great Basin. The type site for this morphology is the complex of campsites called, collectively, the Lake Mojave Site. So, yes. You have a Lake Mojave (Crozier-Campbell and Campbell 1937) point. Does it have a context? These were not all points. They had a multitude of functions, and yours is no exception.

On second thought, it has an impact-fractured tip and a burinated lateral edge. The presence of a burin is important in research of technological diffusion from the Old World, although it has been argued that the burin itself resulted from fortuitous circumstances (observation of chance damage and recognition by tool users of the advantages this damage may have given in the oerformance of certain activities), and should not constitute a typological class, but rather, may have served to rapidly change edge angles for hafting or edge use. It looks even closer to Silver Lake varieties than Lke Mojave. It may rest somewhere along a continuum between the two patterns, those of 'Silver Lake' and 'Lake Mojave.'

Don't sell it, please. Record it. I'll help you.
-Thaddeus

Thanks for your insight. Want to give this one a try?

PArman, but similar to some Borax Lake Specimens. Obsidian (NApa also?)

No, that one is from a site near Susanville. I originally guessed Silver lake, but then guessed Parman. This is an interesting area. I have found an atlatl weight and a stone with an etched cross on it also.
The "lake Mojave" was found on a gravel bar in the river, so no useful context.

The gravel bar may represent an eroded surface. The Lake Mojave-related biface is not abraded to any degree to suggest that it was transported any great distance from a horizontally exposed deposit, and even if it was, it still eroded from a site not far upstream. If you can send me some general coordinates, I can map the piece using geologic and topographic data, with aerial photos, and maybe determine if the deposit is more probably primary or secondary. The lowest floodplains of channels are often surfaces re-exposed by erosive action, and the worn obsidian may have been much older than the Lake Mojave point, redeposited during the Allerod warm period, perhaps from a fluted point site, although obsidian is not as hard as chert (~5 - 5.5 on the Mohs scale for SiO2-rich glasses, and an average of 7 for crystalline SiO2), and may have, as you suspect, come from the same deposit but had worn differentially. It is an understandable mistake to interpret these artifacts as lacking context. You were just there at the right time. Please, use GPS and record these sites.
Susanville is located in geographic range of all three technological types, but artifacts identified as Silver lake usually have short, slightly expanding stem, while both Borax Lake and Parman are straight to slightly contracting. They can be found together, where morphology, again viewed as a continuum, Do you use the Overstreet guide? It is often very inaccurate, with poor editing and no professional refereeing to speak of.
These names (Parman, etc.) are simply conventions, though, to identify a shape and production technique/size range with a specific type site. Parman, Silver LAke, and Borax Lake are all related by period and by adaptation to similar environments, but only as technologies. Genetic relationships are not possible to resolve, but can be inferred.
The common artifact to all of these projectile point types, and to Western Clovis points, is the crescentic object.

I'll bring my GPS next time I'm up in the area. Everything else I have seen on this big bar is well worn obsidian, so I figured this material probably didn't wear as easily as obsidian.
Any thoughts on this:


about 3x2" max thickness of 1/2"

The stone is, for starters, a ground discoidal object made of hypabyssal porphyritic rhyolite. Discoidal objects were made frequently, in Millingstone Horizon assemblages, during earlier periods of the middle Holocene (~ 7,500 - 5,500 BP). The cross motif is common to many cultures and is not necessarily a representation of any single concept, at once or through time, and even on any single artifact . In Illinois http://virtual.parkland.edu/ias/publications/Illinois_Rock_Art/ISMrockartA.htm, it is a feature of rock art, and in other locales as far away as Korea http://myhome.shinbiro.com/~kbyon/petro/imdong.htm, it is also a common motif.

I have also, in San Jose, recently (last week) found a very small (<2cm)discoidal with some kind of square motif (four dots in a black pigment). The design may be incidental, but the ground surfaces, possible linear patterns, and shape are all cultural in origin, and were found on a site rich in fire altered rock, debitage, ground stone, and formed flaked artifacts. It is also on a landform associated with the middle Holocene.

Again, I believe these artifacts that you have shown all to be important. If you have any information, I will gladly compile it into official DPR forms and compile GIS-generated maps for you. I would be interested especially in the ground objects, since one of my major research interests and the subject of a current project is the communicative "archive" that ground material functioned as, which retained symbolic purpose in actual form of objects and by providing a "blackboard" for portable messages.

My friend who owns the ranch where I found the stones is not interested in having the location disclosed, so I can't help with that. I can show you a pic of the atlatl weight I found:

I noticed parallel lines on the edge.



Is the entire edge encompassed by these parallel incised features? Then, we have something else. An object similar to a cogged stone, another artifact type associated with the middle Holocene, but concentrated in Southern California, although found much further South than California.
Why won't your friend disclose the site location? All he/she has to do is disclose the information of the presence of the site, which will be found, anyway, if development occurs, to an archaeological information center. If he/she owns the land, then the artifacts are his/hers. If he cares to help complete the cultural map of the dead and trampled and contribute to science and to the interests of Native Americans, he/he himself will provide the information in confidence to this agency:

Northeast Information Center
California State University, Chico
Phone (530) 898-6256
Fax (530) 898-4413
neinfocntr@csuchico. edu
I don't have to know.

No one can take the land. Seriously. There is nothing to fear. It would be sad if the site is never known. It's as if everything he/she ever did while alive is lost forever, just because someone decided to keep the heirlooms and throw away the journals, diaries, and photo albums of the deceased. The contest is the important part of an archaeological site to scientists, so he/she need not fear for the artifacts. They're his/hers.

As for the atlatl weight, it is best to just describe its attributes and shape, like the notching or polishing, instead of assuming it is an atlatl weight. It is an artifact, possibly an atlatl weight. Was it found near the discoidal object? Were there any projectile point types present that you can disclose?

I'll let him know what you said about his site, but folks get a little weird about
their property as they watch the casinos gain power and influence.
I assumed atlatl weight because of polish marks,symmetry, flat base, notched ends, shape, and 67 gram weight (though its original weight would have been higher as there is a small break in the piece). It certainly fits the profile I have read for " California Boatstones". And, it was found in the vicinity where others have been found.

as for the etched stone, those parallel lines are more a product of shadow and angle. Nothing else to suggest cogging.

Thank you for the insight into these mysteries.