Resources for Identifying Arrowheads

If you want to study and identify insects, then you have a tough road ahead of you. I've read that there are over 350,000 different species of just Beetles (that's a quarter-of-a-million!). And if you want to collect and identify Native American Artifacts ("arrowheads"), the number of different types (though much smaller) is still pretty daunting: over 1,000.
One thousand different types of arrowheads, projectiles, points, blades, etc.
I only have THREE children and I still get their names wrong from time to time!

Fortunately, for those of us who enjoy walking along plowed fields and wading through waist-high creek water in search of these rocky links to our continent's past inhabitants, there are resources to help us. I have compiled a series of links to online resources that should be able to help you identify just about every tool or tip in your collection.

(1) What's the Point?
 
This simple to use and extremely helpful website contains a step-by-step guide that will ask you a series of basic questions (with pictures and diagrams) in order to zero-in on your classification. The number of arrowhead types is rather limited to just major categories, but I have found this to be very handy (and very kid-friendly).
(Click on the name or the picture to go to the website)








(2) Projectile Point Identification Guide
 

One of the largest online databases of Native American Artifacts, with thousands of reference photographs. This site breaks the USA into basic regions and contains a wealth of information about shape, flaking patterns, cross-sections, size, and age of every type of projectile and tool. I spend quite a bit of time here.

(3) Overstreet ID
 

The name Overstreet is legendary within the world of collectibles. The Overstreet Indian Arrowhead Identification Database website boasts over 60,000 reference photographs and a (somewhat) guided tour to help you classify your points. You can search by Shape, Region, or Alphabetically. 

(4) TreasureNet
 

Sometimes, even with all of the wonderful online resources at our fingertips, we still have difficulty nailing the exact category or type of our tips. TreasureNet is a fantastic forum where you can post pictures of your artifacts, and then a huge community of Indian enthusiasts will pitch in to help you identify them.

Other Helpful Resources:

Western Artifacts

Stone Tools

Arrowhead Timeline (great!)

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Arrowhead Chronicles: Episode One

I will never forget my first discovery of a Native American artifact: a long, multicolored jasper arrowhead that was sitting exposed atop a mound of dark soil in our neighbor's garden in the tiny, quiet town of Doniphan, Missouri. The year was 1980.

Unfortunately, that exquisitely carved and beautifully banded blade has been lost for at least the second time in its long life. I would love to have it back again. It would be another nine years before I would find my second Indian relic, this time time along the shores of the Little Gasconade River near Freeburg, Missouri. A small rise in the center of a long, muddy field yielded multiple arrowheads and scrapers, along with several chip piles. Due to the quantity of artifacts continually produced by each season's tilling and turning of the soil, it was obvious that the area had been a Native American campground for many years.

Artifacts from near the Little Gasconade River, Missouri

Fast forward nearly thirty more years. I am now not only a rockhound and relic collector, I am also a father. And I have done my best to impart my passion for geology and history to my offspring. My first two children (daughters) carefully avoided these pursuits, but my third child, Chase, has been bitten by the bug. He has joined me in the shale piles in Utah splitting for Trilobites and has sifted through hundreds of pounds of wet sand and gravel seeking for fossilized shark's teeth in the deep South. He has scratched through the rusty, iron and silica rich earth near Mt. Ida, Arkansas to acquire the finest quartz crystals in North America, and he has scaled the heights of the Colorado Rockies seeking for pyrite cubes strewn about in the tailings of abandoned mines.

But lately he has been bitten by a slightly different (yet related) bug: Arrowheads.

We've spent endless hours watching the antics of Randy and Spike over at the Heartbreaker Relics channel on Youtube, or the predictable "We'll get back to ya" closing line after each exciting find on the channel TheDitchWalker. My son lamented that he himself had never found an arrowhead.

That problem was resolved....today.

After receiving a hot tip about a productive site not quite 10 miles south of our home, we spent 2-1/2 hours traipsing through a huge, flat field that was still moist from a few days of steady rain and littered with the remains of short, shattered corn stalks and withered cobs. Within minutes of hitting the soil, Chase landed our first and his first-ever Indian find: a broken base. By the end of the short adventure, we had a nice little collection of blades, bases, tips, and one whole arrowhead.

Enjoy this 90-second video about our experience:

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Crinoids, Bryozoans and More in Southern Illinois Roadcut

Looking west (north side of roadcut)

Almost exactly five miles east of Anna, Illinois, along Highway 146, a small rocky outcrop on the north side of the gentle incline yields a fair amount of ancient, aquatic fossils. Crinoids, shells, and Archimedes screws (bryozoans) abound, both having been weathered loose as well as in situ.

The layered outcrop on the north side shows the most promise, but the dirt covered exposure on the southern bank is worth digging through as well.

CLICK HERE for a Google Maps locator to this site

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