Posted 8 years ago
loudestfam…
(1 item)
found in the Harpeth river in Tennessee measures 8" x 3" trying to figure out exactly what it is & what tribe it may have belong to.
What kind of lithic is this? Way too large to be an arrowhead... | ||
| Native American Antiques722 of 1959 |  |  |
Judging by the offset of the haft, I would guess knife blade.
It's really large & heavy. It is 8" long, 3" wide and about 1 1/2" thick in the middle. Because of it's size, I really don't think it is a knife. The edges aren't very thin, although they may have been thinner and being in the river for God only knows how long wore them down. I have googled it & can't find anything like it. The closest thing I have found to it is maybe a lance since they are used for large game. I really don't know much about these things so the word "haft" is one I will use in my research. Thank you for your help.
The more I research the more I think this is some kind of tool. An axe maybe...
I see a rock with natural wear vice a human, hand worked piece.
scott
I think was shaft, just missed the s.
I tend to agree with Scott, unless it's cast iron, or something like that.
Hi Bill... I said haft, perhaps a better choice of word would have been "tang" which is the part used to haft a knife to a handle or an arrowhead to a shaft... I was thinking it might be either a uniface knife blade or perhaps a uniface hafted scraper used in the preparation of hides. A uniface tool is struck from a core so that it is roughly flat on one side and usually crudely worked for a specific purpose on the other. This example is quite crude, and from just photos, impossible to tell if it is genuine, but along either side of the roughly central ridge it looks like a hammer stone was used to thin the blade. It also looks as if a flake was removed from the other side of the tang and snapped off to make it easier to haft. If it is a genuine artifact, it has also probably suffered some wear and damage and was probably lost or discarded. I was looking for a comparable... best I could find is this South American uniface blade, though it is from a different culture and it looks like a little more effort went into the making... https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/47198759_belize-mayan-7-inch-lithic-macro-blade-flint I won't go so far as to say that this object was conclusively man made, though to my eye it does look worked by human hands into a very basic tool.
It has no sign of being worked, rock, but that said, a fast moving river can wear a rock smooth. The left picture is misleading, because it makes it look like it has a sharp edge, which it doesn't, as far as I can tell from the right picture, and it's 1 1/2" thick. It's just too hard to tell anything, from the pictures here. It almost looks like slag metal of some kind.
You may be right Bill. If it is 1.5" thick at the edges for sure!
Here is something like it, but no info or dimensions. Post #12 Grizzly Adams:
http://www.outdoorsmenforum.ca/showthread.php?t=55809
I,m with Scottvez except it looks more like cast iron or something worn naturally.
Is it magnetic? If so it could be a piece of weathered shrapnel.
It is,paleolithic spear point killing big game,bear bison and other large animals,once,they are,down they spear for quick death sorry for the blunt language,but i speak truth wild game,was sometimes hard,to kill but they always hunted with bows and spearing while wounded was a common practice so if you type paleolithic you will find your timeline nice,find i have found,a,few,of these points,and infact it was at the same spot were my artworks,were located here in bethania north carolina,
Perhaps a large scraper such as a spokeshave...
I found one just like it in my creek bed when my creek dried up in southern Ohio
Heres the link to mine
https://photos.app.goo.gl/LsEE6iM74hQmVGBz9