Courtesy Photo | Projectile points found at Fort McCoy, Wis., in past archaeological digs at the...... read more read more
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Archaeologists with Colorado State University’s (CSU) Center for Environmental Management of Military Lands (CEMML) supporting Fort McCoy use two main tools to test below the ground surface for artifacts — a shovel and ¼-inch wire mesh.
The shovel is used by archaeologists to scoop soil into a wooden frame with ¼-inch wire mesh attached to it. The ¼-inch wire mesh allows the soil to fall through the openings but prevents rocks and other materials from falling through. Most of these rocks turn out to be natural gravel, but some happen to be artifacts.
Many of the artifacts are small chips of stone that were removed from a larger stone while creating a stone tool such as a spearpoint, arrowhead, knife, or another tool. On rare occasions, stone tools are caught by the ¼-inch wire mesh, and these stone tools can help us understand what activities people were doing at the place where the stone tool was found. Stone tools can indicate people were hunting, or butchering animals recently harvested during a hunt. On very rare occasions, it can appear to be a bit of both.
Sometimes archaeologists at Fort McCoy find butchering tools that were fashioned from old projectile points (spearpoints or arrowheads) like those which appear in the photo accompanying this article. The most likely explanation is that the projectile point broke while hunting and then was reshaped to turn into a butchering tool called a scraper.
Scrapers were used to separate the meat from the hide and were usually only sharpened on one edge. It is almost impossible to say whether the tools were reshaped by the original tool maker or by someone who happened to find it on the ground at a later date.
One of the featured artifacts (A) was found at a site which produced another stone tool, a Raddatz spearpoint, that would have been made at the same time as the reshaped tool was originally created.
Other artifacts, including Native American ceramics, from the site dated to hundreds or even thousands of years later than the Raddatz spearpoint and the scraper reworked from a Raddatz spearpoint.
The other featured artifact (B), came from a site which did not yield any other stone tools, but early Native American ceramic fragments were recovered which would have been made thousands of years after the original form of the tool would have been fashioned.
Both of the reworked points could have originally been fashioned to be Raddatz spearpoints (see item C in the photo for an example of a Raddatz spearpoint recovered from a site at Fort McCoy), which were commonly used 3,500 – 5,000 years ago.
Stone tools, including projectile points such as spearpoints and arrowheads could be re-sharpened for re-use. Resharpening involves chipping away more of the tool, thereby making the tool smaller. After a certain amount of resharpening, a tool can no longer be used for the original purpose, but sometimes it can be used for another task. In a way, reworking can be viewed as an early recycling program.
All archaeological work conducted at Fort McCoy was sponsored by the Directorate of Public Works Environmental Division Natural Resources Branch.
Visitors and employees are reminded they should not collect artifacts on Fort McCoy or other government lands and leave the digging to the professionals.
Any individual who excavates, removes, damages, or otherwise alters or defaces any post-contact or pre-contact site, artifact, or object of antiquity on Fort McCoy is in violation of federal law.
The discovery of any archaeological artifact should be reported to the Directorate of Public Works Environmental Division Natural Resources Branch.
| Date Taken: | 05.09.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 05.09.2025 13:08 |
| Story ID: | 497520 |
| Location: | FORT MCCOY, WISCONSIN, US |
| Web Views: | 21 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Fort McCoy ArtiFACT: Reworked projectile points, by Scott Sturkol, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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