I was curious to know if there were different types of camps.. for instance.. i lurk and follow the pay digs that everyone goes too on here..and i see a variety of points, drills, etc....now my place... i seem to have more scrapers and tools... Sunday we picked up 3 new scrapers and 4 hand axes....so far to date that's about a dozen axes.... Do these finds represent a hunter gather community.. or just the type of Indians they were.... i believe Comanche roamed my area.

Thanks in Advance guys,


Chris

More like what prin****l type of site it is, butchering, wood working, overnight, or continuous use camp. I've found several that had few points, mostly Clear Forks and Guadalupe scrappers.

Right.... i guess that's a better way of putting it. I'm assuming there's such areas.. Possibly the "wood working" area of the entire camp??.. I mean this is pretty spread out over 70 acres...Ponds have been dug, so a lot of this stuff is just now coming to the surface..

Right on Tehuacana...

Chris, the chances of an artifact that you find on the ground is probably not Comanche. Archaelogists say that the Natives moved into North America about 12,000 years ago. The Comanche broke from the Shoshone Tribe around 1700a.d. in Wyoming. So, from 12,000 to 1700a.d. is about 13,700 years without Comanche in your area and 200 years where Comanche could have lived. Who knows who was here 5,000 years ago and even if they were tribed at that time. That's one of the cool things about finding points is that there is a big question of who held this point. Since the Natives didn't have a writing system (excluding some of the Aztec) we really have alot of missing information that we can't get back. Our information on the Indians is extremely limited. Hope this helps Chris...

I'm with Tehuacana, certain work area of a particular camp. Also different point types often overlap ,or don't in time period, and usually deeper in the dirt is older.For instance, I was at Nacho's 2 weeks ago my table found 5 Kinney blades 2000-5000 years old ,the screen next to us yeilded 2 G10 Perdiz arrow points,500-1000 years old. I'm no expert ,just a digger,but this tells me that camps or communitys were built upon each other,just like now. Going back to agreeing with Tehuacana, I believe the camp on my property was not inhabited very long it is small and condensed with mostly arrow points and scraper tools. This leads me to believe I am on a hunting camp or maybe a mid point camp for the way home.Ihave also been told that possibly Lipan Apache were one of the types to pass through my area . All we can do is guess . Hope that helped out

Travis ,YES that is also a nail onthe head! The Comanche, I believe, preferred steel and Winchesters!

quote from the Texas handbook online ..

"Prior to European settlement Lipan Apaches and Tonkawa Indians inhabited parts of what is now Fayette County. Many Indian artifacts have been found, especially along the Colorado River and near Round Top. A few miles north of the Colorado River, above Little Pin Oak Creek, a stratified multicomponent campsite was found, with Clovis, Plainview, and other later artifacts"

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/FF/hcf3.html

got to love the internet!

also looks to be an old German town...farmlands and such... I'm assuming that's why everything's so scattered out there.... the old man (German) who sold us the land, said it was plowed for cotton at one point....just stories~..

cool stuff..thanks for your replies!

Good call on Comanche... i thought i saw a map once....awww..

http://www.texasindians.com/map2.htm

tonkawa.....comanche passed through!!! ahah

I go on what Hester has in his book "Digging into South Texas Prehistory". The tribes down here in this area were no more then family groups with a lot of un-pronouncable names. Those names were recorded and the area the tribes inhabited by the early Spanish explorers. Several towns and counties have their names derived from those tribes.
Our hillbilly bunch down here weren't as advanced, and didn't have middens to speak of. Mostly overnight camp sites. Still, while surface hunting, I've found sites that were rich in scrapers and very few points. Which would lead you to think the site was an area where skinning of road kill went on, or some form of wood working like making "spear" shafts or other wooden objects.
Other sites, I've found hardly any scrapers but lots of points with varying dates ranges. And other sites were like their trash dump, lots of broken points and flakes but hardly any completes.

Great info guys ,I think i learned something here too! Tehuacana is probably right unpronouncable and many ,If they had names ,who was there to record them before the first spaniards?..... guess we just keep relying on the experts

I'm going to have to lean on wood cutting camp!!!... haha.. only reason i say this is that the amount of petrified wood I've found is just astounding... anything from red and orange.... to wood that looks chard black and worn, as if it was sat on.. you know what i mean.. the edge was rounded... just odd..

good info tehuacana!

this doesn't include all my points or hand axes, but here's an idea... plus a lot of pics of petrified!..

https://www.photoshop.com/user/crstfr

keep digging!

Just a few names of the tribes in this area.
Atanaguaypacam
Cacaxtle
Carrizo (Carrizo Springs Tx.)
Garza (hmmm, sounds familiar)
Payuguan
Piniquu
These are from Hester's book, names that the Spanish explorers recorded on their treks through South Tx.
Family groups, not large tribes, so to me, it was just like a last name. Look in the prehistoric phone book to find where the Payuguan family lives.

Are you in Fayette Co. or Bastrop?

Me or Chris? I'm in Frio county.

Chris Your on the work camp. Where the women worked if there are very few points look for a spot not to far where the main camp was (200 to 500)yards. Where I come from all the land is broke and I have been hunting for 35 years and there are a few places where all I find is scrapers and blades no points but the main camp is off to one side or the other with lots of points. I hope this will help you find the mother load of points. Happy hunting

i'm in Fayette... close to the lee county border.

yah it seems the all the points were found in one area... on or around the road next to our house...I've also found two shards of pottery.. one being from the Anasazi (sp) period. ..a lot of the hand axes were found twords the back of the property.....

cool stuff... thanks for the replys!... great info!

How many acres you have? Are you near any creeks or washouts. Any terrain or are you in flatland?

i guess the bigger the fire midden ,the older the camp?the midden we are digging right now is bout ten feet at the tallest point and bout 30x30 round.think it could possibly hold some paleo at the lowest point toward the center of the midden?

Logical thinking, but take into consideration the location, terrain, and vegetation. Since we don't have middens, just small fire rings in our area, I've found Paleo points in fire pits that weren't much bigger then a pickup tire.
If the site in your area was ideal,plenty of fire wood and prime location, plentiful game, they may have stayed longer in one area each year, hence larger middens. Other area's with not such outstanding conditions may have been used for thousands of years but not as frequently. So smaller yet longer used middens.

we are on 70 acres..... at the front of the property there are big gullies... .. we have a hill.. if you want to call it that.. half wooded with pine, post and blackjack oak...