Review by Greg Truitt
Archeology – January 1995 – Colorado Central Magazine
Arrowheads and Stone Artifacts
C.G. Yeager
Published in 1986 by Pruett
ISBN 0-871-08-709-X
THE WICOMICO RIVER in eastern Maryland wanders across tidal marshes, and the shoreline at low tide is mostly mud. Near an artesian spring was a small sand crescent which I passed frequently in my capacity as a ten-year-old dipper of soft crabs.
Eureka! One day I passed the beach and there was something I had only heard about or seen in collections — a stone arrowhead.
Washed out of the sand where the channel ran in close, a vestigial reminder of the Wicimica Indians, who vanished 200 years ago — victims perhaps of a virus carried over the bay from civilized Maryland by a runaway slave or indentured servant.
That arrowhead and a few others residing in a cigar box formed my only knowledge of these people who had hunted the same river, marsh, and forest as I. My chief amazement was that they were gone. It was a privilege to possess these tokens of prior life.
As an adult, I am no longer surprised by the disappearance of tribes and cultures. In fact, it seems rather a commonplace of history.
But the sense of awe at finding a stone tool is still there. The questions still come to mind about the humans who made and used them. Speculation is actually the best part of a find, and it is a game which promises no end, according to C.G. Yeager, a lifelong collector and ridge-walker.
Yeager’s fascination began on a hill in what is now the center of Greeley, Colo. “Even at a young age, there was no question as to what had been found and the exhilaration I felt even then was indescribable.”
Yeager’s path is not the road of the schooled archæologist representing a traditional body of thought. He loves to speculate about who made and used the stone tools that remain from yesteryear; speculation is the joy that sends him into the blowouts, around the standing rocks, and to the campsite nestled into a hill that cuts the winter wind.
He has produced a textbook with hiking boots, acute eyesight, and a turning stick (a tool recommended to compensate for modern upright stature). He has the attitude of a natural scholar captivated with the presence of ancient humans whose works, relatively timeless in rock, somehow arrive at his feet.
Arrowheads and Stone Artifacts gives an overview of neolithic technology and culture which may take several readings to absorb. His observations and research extend from the Paleolithic age 20,000 years ago through the Archaic and Woodland cultures, ending about 1700 when Iron from the European culture began to circulate in North America.
Many drawings and photographs leave an impression that man’s basic life problems, at least those which can be solved with stone, have remained fairly constant — and complex.
Stones inspire questions. Is this piece a blunt arrowhead, or is it actually a small scraper once hafted to a stick and used to remove marrow from long bones? The wood that held it was finished with an edge-curved stone much resembling the colonial wheelwright’s tool or the modern cabinetmaker’s spokeshave.
The process of collecting these artifacts is covered well, with strict ethical recommendations. Yeager advocates surface collecting only, and the usual courtesy due the land owner. Most of his collection came from private land, but he notes that artifacts can be found even in street gravel. Permission is needed for the first, and for the second, you need only watch where you put your feet. Several years ago, I found an artifact in a neighbor’s driveway. Yeager’s book identified it for me as a thumb scraper.
He also explains something which has been a puzzlement. The term “flint,” which seems to be used to refer to almost any arrowhead, has two general meanings: 1) A generic term for a tool stone which may be made of jasper, agate, or several other minerals, and 2) the geologist’s flint, which in this part of the world is reputedly quite rare.
Yeager’s status as an amateur archæologist may be threatened by this eminently readable and concise report of what he knows of the unknown world. And it does promote the important realization that, if it weren’t for an opposable thumb grasping a sharp piece of stone, we might still be dipping bone marrow with our fingers.
Beyond his good advice about searching for stone artifacts, Yeager even tells you how to make your own stone tools. After you spend some time with this book, no walk will ever be the same.
— Greg Truitt
