Rant: Hit 12,000 year old arrowhead count at the Playa Verde site last week and it broke me

Been digging at that dry lake bed in Nevada for 3 seasons. Never expected to find that many. 12,000. One guy said it's more than the whole state museum has. Made me wonder how many are still out there buried. Anybody else hit a number that just felt unreal?

3 comments

3 Comments

davis.linda1mo ago

Are you trying to put the rest of us amateur diggers out of business or something? 12,000 arrowheads sounds less like a hobby and more like you're running a one-person factory. I mean, did you just trip over them constantly or did you bring a rake and a prayer? That number feels unreal because it basically is unreal, like finding a penny for every bad decision you made that day. Honestly, if the state museum is jealous, they should probably just hire you on the spot.

patp791mo ago

Bring your own sorting system next time or youll lose your mind. I hit 8,000 at a site in Oregon last fall and spent three weeks just trying to catalog them all. Get some of those plastic coin tubes for the smaller points and label everything with a sharpie before you even bag it. Trust me, you'll thank yourself later when you're not trying to figure out which pile came from which grid square. Also invest in a good back brace, because bending over that many times will wreck your spine no matter how young you feel. Your mileage may vary on the labeling thing, but I learned that lesson the hard way and ended up having to re-sort half my collection.

jones.blake5d ago

You're acting like he's planning a military operation not digging up some rocks. Just grab a bag and some zip-locks, it's not that deep man.