Chert from Kentucky

[northgeorgiasportsman]

I grew up in the mountains looking for "arrowheads" in my family's sorghum fields. Over the years I've found many excellent artifacts, from arrowheads to knives and spears, and always valued the black chert or flint heads, especially the tiny intricate bird points. Anytime you find black flakes or pieces, you know they were brought here by someone because it's just not a native rock to this region.

Now we've got some hunting land in Kentucky and I've looked over a small tobacco patch a few times. I've found TONS of points and almost all of them are black or grey chert. I have also found many, many pieces of un-knapped chert ranging from grey, to green, to even pink. Most of the pieces are about baseball size or smaller.

If I were to take a notion to knap some points, would these pieces be suitable? I'll try to post some pics to help.

 

[Nicodemus]

If the chert is of a good grade, it will be fine. Here`s a little trick to get into those round shaped nodules. Also, this is the only time that I wear eye protection when foolin` with stone. When doin` this procedure, you have no control over where the flakes are gonna fly.

Place the round nodule on a sturdy piece of wood. Use a good medium size hammerstone and with a good swing, strike straight down on the center of the nodule. What will happen is, the shock of the strike will go through the nodule, hit the wood, and rebound back through the nodule. This will neatly split it in half. Then you can use an antler billet to remove flakes for points, by strikin` the flat surface you have created. When you remove all the flakes that you can get, you will be left with a small core stone that makes an interestin` ornament to keep. You can occasionally find these original core stones in ancient knappin` areas. They make interestin` artifacts.

 

[GAnaturalist]

They would probably work. I have made a lot of points out of field chert.

Most Native Americans mined their chert, meaning they sought the chert that was found under the frost line. When rock is exposed to freezing tempertures they can develop tiny cracks, cracks that were not there when they formed from heat and compaction. The cracking comes from water seeping into the rock, even chert has pores, and freezing temps causes expansion, and then you have your cracks. Yes, some rocks have cracks from when they were formed too, but generally rocks exposed above the frost line will have an extra amount of cracks depending on how porous they are.

Some chert was also heat treated by Native Americans. I order Novaculite/Arkansas white chert from Native Way, and they heat treat their bifaces. I all depends on lots of different factors to get the best knappable chert.

So just give your field chert a try, if there is not to many cracks in the chert than you can give heat treating a try. You can find info on heat treating by googling it.

OR you can mail me 20 pounds and I can tell you how it knapps !