# Question about flint



## smokeeater465 (Feb 29, 2016)

OK, I have found an area in Crawford county that has produced some nice quartz arrow heads.  As I have focused on this spot looking around I started to find some flint chips about the size of a dime.  Point is, there is ZERO flint in the area where I'm finding it.  Not for 20 miles.  I recently found some nice flint arrow heads there as well since we have expanded our food plots. So, here is my question:

How did the flint make its way that far north? And did the Indians have trade routes or meeting places where they would work with stone material?

It seems with all the quartz heads and the few flint heads that this might have been an area where they gathered and worked heads or possibly a camp.  How should I go about getting into some serious looking?  I want to find a good knife or some other tools.  Any advise would be helpful.


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## Nicodemus (Feb 29, 2016)

Flint, chert, and all workable stone was traded all over this country. It was a valuable commodity. Dover chert from Tennessee has been found here in my home county in southwest Georgia. Points made from ridge and valley chert in NW Georgia have been found down around present Lake Seminole down here. An occasional quartz point is found down here and quartz doesn`t occur naturally here. Knife River chert points have been found in Michigan. That stuff is found in North Dakota. Obsidian, which can be traced from the actual source, is found in several places. Some from present day Yellowstone National Park has been found at Cahokia in Ohio.

And it was all carried on foot from place to place.


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## NCHillbilly (Feb 29, 2016)

What Nic said. There is no chert within about a hundred miles of here, but I commonly find points and debitage of Knox chert from TN, hornstone from KY/IN, and rhyolite from 250 miles east of here in central NC. 

The older cultures until about the middle Archaic period were mostly highly nomadic hunter-gatherers, so they moved up and down river systems annually, and covered a lot of territory instead of staying in one area. 

In later years, a lot of trading went on, Particularly the Woodland and Mississippian periods. Stuff that I know has been found in mounds here in western NC: Obsidian from Yellowstone, Flint Ridge chert and Hopewellian pottery from northern Ohio, and copper from Wisconsin and Michigan. Sheet mica from western NC has been found all over the northern US. 

For that matter, the historic Cherokee didn't think twice about walking to what is now upstate NY to kill a few Senecas, and vice versa.


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## Jake Allen (Feb 29, 2016)

Just keep looking for 'em Paul. The artifacts are there. I look for the edges, corners,  and just parts of worked material, chert or quartzite.
Sometimes I flip over a good piece, sometimes it is just a broken part.


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## smokeeater465 (Feb 29, 2016)

Thanks for all that guys.  I didn't know that the native Americans would travel that far OR traded in such a wide range like that.

Oh and Jeff, next time your down that way go to the powerline at the Land of Promise and check around in front of the tower stand.


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## Anvil Head (Mar 3, 2016)

Theory has it they came from Asia so moving around the Americas is no big feat if you think about it. 
Plus the Egyptians and Phonecians were running up and down the Mississippi in the BC's, based on artifacts found in the river near St. Louis. They weren't there to take pictures.
Check out the book "America's BC" (don't have author's name at hand). Might change your outlook on things - like our government school system.


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