These are just a few surface find knives.





The majority of brush country finds are this type. From desmukes and catans to tortugas and angustora points. Approx. 80% to 85% of my surface finds are in this category. I'm not counting the dozens of clear fork, guadalupe, and cresent scrapers that I have stored in boxes.

My 1900 Queen Elizabeth dime don't show up too good in these pictures. That was actually a dig find, city was installing a fire hydrant and I was watching them work (yeah right, you ever seen city workers hard at it) and saw it down about 2'. Coin book says it's worth a dollar..Now you see why I hunt arrowheads instead of old coins.
Couple of points are out of petrified wood.

Good show Te! It is interesting those amerinds didn't use "notches and barbs" like other's in Texas.

Yep, gt, that's what I have posted on here before (stemmed vs unstemmed). Still haven't gotten a definitive answer on why points found south of San Antonio seem to be more in the majority of knives, but once you get west, east, and north of SA more stemmed points are found then knives. Wasn't like there was a fence seperating the tribes or game migration. And any point found in Austin or Waco is found here too. I have 1 point I found 30 miles east of Cotulla that is a Caddo point so I know there was trade and trans-tex migration. Also have as many rivers and creeks as North and East Texas, so water was not a deciding factor.
Plus there are Paleo points here so it's not like the area wasn't populated 10,000 years ago.

I wonder if Dr. Hester might have an opinion on that interesting question? Or, anyone else?

Haven't really gotten a definite answer. Talked to Dan Davis 20+ years ago, got some ideas but nothing concrete. Was going to discuss it with Hester in the mid-80's as he is from around this area, but his attitude about artifact hunting at that time was not confluent with mine so I left.
From talking to the old timers from this area, it was stirrup high to a horse in prairie grass up until the 1920's. Cattle brought in the mesquite, which between that and water wells and irragation has dried up a lot of this countries natural springs.
There is still a lot of native flora and fauna that was around then so there wasn't a shortage of food source. Nor a shortage of knapping material. Plenty of flint rock hills. Mabbe we just got stuck with the hillbilly tribes. Possibly smaller groups/family clans then north of here.
But my collection is the roughly the same percentage wise as others in the area. Also mentioned in a previous post, no middens are found in the area. Any mounds found are burial sites.

Wow Te, thats a great collection. Now that really gives more meaning to your observation of the line between stemmed & unstemmed points. I sure dont have a meaningful answer but it looks like a very well defined reality.
Here's a detail to add to your notes, I have been on two really productive "bird point" sites in the last few years and I recall that a if a point like a Catan was found it was a declared a bird point preform.
In other words, if it didn't have a proper base, it didn't belong in CenTX [ North of your area !]

Good report on the ancient flora. Milleniums ago most of us would not even know we were in Texas unless
a local resident actually told us so !
At one of the established nature preserves here in CenTX, the Park Ranger guide gives volumes of information, , , , , including, there were NO cedar trees. The buffalo ate the shoots and / or trampled the larger saplings ! What substitute did they use for "cedar fever" ?

Good thing your gambling trip is still a bit in the future !!! All the reporting on the big wildfire in Bastrop mentioned that the Coushatta indians had mobilised to help with the manpower.
What a bad deal for gamblers at that time. . . No body to man the tables, empty the coin boxes, count the money and haul it off to the reservation's bank !

The south Texas cultural area is dominated by triangular dart points, though there are clearly a
variety of stemmed points that "reached" the area --
such as Bell/Andice--part of the Early Archaic Calf Creek Tradition, extending from Oklahoma into NE Mexico.

This cultural area corresponds pretty nicely with the
South Texas Plains, and fades away as one approaches the Edwards Plateau.

There is, as the Unknown Tehuacana has pointed out, a dividing line/zone between the south Texas cultural area and that associated with the SW Edwards Plateau and the Central Texas archaeological area.

Forty-three years ago, in 1966, Parker Nunley and I published a paper in the Texas Journal of Science (Vol. XVIII, No. 3, pp. 233-253), entitled "Preliminary Archeological Investigations in Dimmit County, Texas." Based on simple distributional analysis, we pointed out that there is a line/zone in which this transition is particularly noted (p. 251).

Indeed, the E-W line/zone cuts through Dimmit County...with higher % of stemmed in northern DM Co, and higher% of unstemmed in southern. That is certainly to be expected...as southern Dimmit County transitions into the dominance of triangular points
from N Webb County and on south.

If one was to pencil in (so it could be erased and
adjusted) this transition line/zone, it certainly extended east through LaSalle, McMullen and Live Oak Counties. As one gets to the coast, things change (to a certain extent).

This zone of transition doesn't mark the extent of the south Texas cultural area, but rather the southern extent to which peoples of the SW Edwards Plateau either hunted or traded (which we know they
did, given all the Edwards chert biface caches in
south Texas). This is very intriguing, because it shows the influence of, or shifting boundaries of, the SW Edwards Plateau diagnostics.

However, the Edwards Plateau folks must have not been receptive to South Texas folks coming up the mouths of the canyons, to party at Garner Park, or swim at
Chalk Bluff. From my excavations and collection documentations over the past 45 years, there is almost no evidence of south Texas diagnostics coming up these river valleys. Some, perhaps, at Kincaid
Rockshelter, but that is on the Sabinal south of the
Escarpment. Ditto for 41ME34, a site I excavated with a UTSA field school in 1987. This is located a
few miles south of Hwy 90 on the coastal plain. You can stand on the site and see the Escarpment to the north. The Archaic contains a mix of south Texas and
Plateau diagnostics, dating back to ca. 4000 B.C. based on radiocarbon dates from the site.

Some years ago, theoretical archaeologists (not me!)
wrote with flair about "interaction spheres." Actually, that might apply to this transition zone region, but the "interaction" was clearly by Plateau
and Canyon folks,with no reciprocation from the south!

The South Texas, or Rio Grande-Nueces, Plains had mesquite, acacia, etc. in place since the end of the Pleistocene. Blaming the spread of mesquite on cattle is an "old rancher's" tale. What spread the mesquite from the river valleys (e.g., at site 41LK31/32 on the Frio above Three Rivers as early as
5500 B.C.) was (1) the cessation of the burning off of the prairies by the south Texas Indian groups; (2)
overgrazing caused post 1870s by barbed wire fencing; and (3) post-1918 or so, the lowering of the water table by deep well irrigation -- so that creeks that flowed year round, and some with parks and bathhouses built along them, turned into sandy and dry channels.

A review of all this stuff, and lots more (with pictures!!) is found in "The Prehistory of South Texas" that I wrote for the Bulletin of the Texas Archeological Society Vol. 66, 1995, and which was
later published in The Prehistory of Texas (Tim Perttula, ed. TAMU Press 2004).

Note to a later post: Catan points are not arrow point preforms. There are oval based thin (thin) arrow point preforms that look like Catan if you only drew an outline of them! Catan, Matamoros, Desmuke,
Abasolo, and Tortugas are all dart points -- not knives. Unless knives have repeated impact fractures from high speed atlatl delivery! Sure, some Tortugas and Abasolo points have "knife" wear under
low-power magnification, but that was a secondary use, perhaps even after discard.

Tom Hester

THAT was what I was wanting to hear. I do have your books, and others as in the last 50 years I've accumulated a fairly large library. And the stemmed/unstemmed has always been a subject that has brought lots of discussion. With little resolution.
Thanks
Tehuacana

Much thanks for the reply, Dr. Hester. I enjoy your books as well.

There were hot springs in LaSalle co. that locals used to go swimming up till the 40's. Couldn't tell that now as it is all brush.
As far as the desmuke/catan points, I never figured they were preforms as I have found too many that were worn to the point of being discards. They were also too thick to be reworked into perdiz or scallorn points. Most of them I found were in LaSalle co. north of Hwy. 624 on what used to be the Cameron Ranch. I'd find 8 - 10 within a 10' radius. on the sides of flint rock hills. Not impressive little boogers but it beat finding nothing.

And SH, sorry to hear nobody is emptying the slot coin boxes. Mabbe they'll just get generous enough to let me do it for them. Part of Obamas plan to help get the economy back on it's feet. Take the money from the casino bank and give it back to us poor folks.

Tom, don't know about your 1994 review, but your book "Digging Into S.Tex. History" 4th edition,page 34 states what I earlier said. Cattle/ grazing spread the mesquite. Wife works for the NRCS, and prescribed burns to control brush is one of their projects. I've found several oak moots on ranches in Dimmit co. that are said to be from cattle herding in the 19th century. Cattle spread a lot of evasive plants.
I just don't see how, for 10's of thousand of years before AmerIndians,that mesquite was not already wide spread. There had to be prairie grass fires from lightning strikes or other external sources long before the first human set foot here. The same can be said about cactus. Burning pear for cattle during droughts is the quickest way to spread it. Load them up with tuna (fruit) torch them and watch cows eat them to the ground. Then see what happens to your ranch.

The scenarios on the spread of mesquite and thorny brush on the Rio Grande Plains have been evolving over the years -- especially the last 15-20 years.
I don't doubt for a moment that cattle helped spread
mesquite -- but I was noting that this was in the context of fencing and changes in ranching practices.
It is really a complex situation and I don't pretend to know all the answers. The mythology of stirrup-high grasslands in south Texas has spread such old ideas as "mesquite as an invader species", sneaking across the Rio Grande. Spanish expeditions crossing from San Juan Bautista del Rio Grande del Norte (present day Guerrero, Coah) moved directly through
Dimmit County, with some nice descriptions of the vegetation in the 18th century. Mixed savannah, with areas of grasses with mesquite present. One expedition got lost for days in the mesquite thickets of the Caramanchel ("Comanche") lake/creek area near Crystal City.

What we know, from archaeology, ethnohistory, and early histories, is that (1) the thorn brush has been
in south Texas since the end of the Pleistocene...about 8000 B.C.; (2) the exact extent of such brush is not known, but the earliest Spanish
accounts (1680s) describe an area that we would recognize today; (3) the Indian practice of firing the grasslands was widespread, though "burning off
a prairie" might have been a few hundred acres in a
particular environment (sure, lightning strikes would have sparked fires at times)-- and this likely played a major role in mesquite patterns. That the environment was a mixed bag (like today, prior to chaining and rootplowing)is clear: pronghorn were much more widespread; the last one in DM Co. killed
ca. 1903 or so; and, the javelina doesn't expand its
range into most of south Texas until the 18th century.

When I was doing archaeological work on the Chaparrosa Ranch in Zavala County in the 1970s, the ranch owner had ideas of returning his 70,000 acres to "native grasslands" (which never existed), and
prescribed burns were part of an SCS program to see how to "control" brush. 24-hr a day rootplowing along the Rio Grande has produced vast wastelands, as one rancher who flew me over this area, described it.
This rancher said that he was thought of as being part of a "cult" because he retained mesquites because of the nitrogen fixing of the soils and, with proper livestock rotation, high grasses...when adjacent ranches--hell on mesquite--were barren.

Nobody knows all the answers, that's for sure. We need a lot more radiocarbon-dated wood identifications from sites in the area, much more pollen work along stream channels and terraces, and geomorphological studies showing changes in the terrain.

(and the park ranger that told one person who has posted on this thread that "cedar" (ashe juniper) was
not present in Central Texas in prehistory ought to be
made to think. Juniper was there since the end of the Ice Ages. Another in the mesquite-juniper myth spun from the brains of senile old timers!

Tom

If you would like, you can Google KARANKAWA and see a map of Indian tribal distribution in the areas above and below San Antonio. It appears that the Coahuiltecan people were responsible for the triangular points.
With the drought, the lake levels at Amistad and Falcon must be very low. Those exposed shorelines have always been interesting places to go on nature walks.

It is interesting how much points from South Texas resemble some of the points from North Africa.

Falcon is full, wife went down there two weeks ago on a Soil & Water Conservation District field day and took pictures for their news letter. I used to live down in that area and I would have thought it was low.
And as far as Africa, might as well be, so many exotics have been brought in for hunting and gotten loose, there is no telling what kind of critter you'd find running around in the brush.
As far as Hesters comment on the javelina, they are on the decline. I think the feral hog population has gotten to the point that there is too much competition for food. I used to always see javapigs on ranches, but, just like the horned toads, hardly see them anymore.

I could not believe it when you said that Falcon was full. I checked the lake levels and Amistad is full too. The U.S. drought map shows the Rio Bravo water shed to be abnormally dry and severe conditions in west Texas.....so where did all that water come from? Mexico?

I ask her and she didn't know. Just knew that all the farmers/ranchers downstream were getting all their water for irragation for free for the month of March. The people from SWCD and NRCS were not to happy hearing that as everyone north of that area is having to pay for their water. A lot of the local farmers aren't even going to plant this year if we don't get some rain.

I think you have me beat on knives.. I can hear it now just another knife.. that makes 1 hundred twenty nine and a half.Guess you can look at it as if they are baby corner tangs!!

More like 300. I found over 30 desmukes in one afternoon off of Cameron Lane. And one frio. That ain't even counting all the broke ones. Trade 50 desmukes for one baby tang.

sounds like a deal to me ,let me know if you have any bites on that trade.I can go about 51

This ain't even all my knives. Didn't want to clog up the board. They all start looking the same after awhile.

ya i hear that.

This from last March when the subject of stemmed and unstemmed points was first considered. Lightly ties in with current finds.

Here's some of the old thoughts on that Stemless line.

Here's the origial review of the stemless line

I'd say that all the surface hunters in the south Texas area agree, it's about a 70/30 or 80/20 percentage rate on unstemmed points over stemmed points. After 30 years of hunting over a three county area, I found a grand total of one Perd. Now that's a common point from the hill country north, same goes with other stemmed points like Montell,Castrovilles, etc. One thing also that I've noticed since starting the hill country screen digs, the Kinney points here, though common, lack the size of points north of here. Yet the bird points are of the same type,amount, and of equal quality as other area's. Nor is it from lack of workable flint. Odd, isn't it?
There are Paleo points in the area,probably as many as in other area's. So all time ranges are represented in south Texas and the same points, just in different ratio's.

I think that Hester's input here, as well as Redman's was very good information that should help alot to separate small knives from actual points like Catan & Matamoros. Although the Camp Wood area is considered Hill Country, we are just off of the Plateau escarpment to the South. We have found Alot of Catans & Matamoros points in our cave site, and I have noticed that numerous exampes have been found as well at the paydig sites as well. I would certainly anti****te point type range overlaps occurring. From a Geologic contex, one of the things I pay attention to is the variable limestone outcrops, in which flint/ chert beds run, and how the material differs from one local to another. Back around Austin, the diggers always raved about the quality of Georgetown flint & Globe flint. Down here, it's big translucent Root Beer flint that they love.

I guess I just call them knives on a general context. You helped a lot, Mike, on giving a more positive id. Thanks.
Some of the points could almost be classified as a point/scraper. Too thick for a point, not thick enough for a scraper. But finished more then a preform. Those are the ones I always called knives. Several are pictured above.
Limestone in this area is pretty much non existant, mostly sandstone, with some caliche. There is a difference is the flint found within the two. Seems the better quality is around sandstone outcroppings. The rootbeer flint is not very found that often. I only have mabbe a half dozen out of good quality rootbeer. And on those, the workmanship is superb.