Registered: Oct 2001
Location:
Posts: 18340

Alibates

About thirty miles north of Amarillo,Texas in the Panhandle on the cliffs lining the course of the Canadian River lie the Alibates flint quarries .I have visited many ancient sites around the world but none have stirred my admiration for man more than these primitive quarries. There is solid archaeological evidence that these sites were worked by an ancient culture as long ago as thirteen thousand years. That is three thousand years older than the Egyptian pyramids. At that time the area where these quarries are located was frequented by giant wooly mammoths now extinct and by the evolutionary progenitors of the horse. Both of those animals now extinct were used as food by the people who quarried the flint and made spear points from it of a unique style.

The material this culture quarried is actually not flint at all but rather a type of dolomite that had been invaded by a particularly colorful strain of agate. This colorful invasion produced a beautiful shiny flint-like rock with streaks of red, maroon, salmon, yellow and even an occasional splash of blue or green which made Alibates “flint” recognizable anywhere it was found. Splashes of this rock were found along both sides of the Canadian River for a stretch of forty or fifty miles but don’t seem to have been located elsewhere in the world.

In 1950 I was involved in a zoological survey of the Canadian River valley within a very few miles of the present Alibates National Monument and I remember seeing the colorful Alibates flint in the cliff faces. It was in 1969 that the Alibates National Monument was created to preserve the principal site of flint quarrying and working in a 1079-acre park along the banks of Lake Meredith.

It is not the flint material, as beautiful as it is, which evokes awe when one stands and looks at the quarry pits, the rubble piles and the stone houses of villages as well as numerous weapon points and tools but rather the fact that seeps into your mind that this site was once a mighty trade center when European “civilization” lived in caves and the Egyptians were three thousand years shy of building the great pyramid of Cheops. Spear points of this material that is not known to occur elsewhere in the world is found by archaeologists in Illinois, Minnesota, California, and even in the Central area of Mexico. Alibates was the “Detroit” or “Pittsburgh” of the ancient US and made weapons and tools for trade. Articles from these other foreign cultures were presented as trade for the points of the Alibates Indians and are frequently found by the archaeologists who work at Alibates. Abalone shell does not naturally occur any closer to Alibates than California yet has been found in the quarry pits. I am not saying that the original culture of thirteen thousand years ago had this wide a trade net. The scientists believe that the peak of the trade occurred in the period of 1300 AD to 1450 AD by a resident culture near the site known as the Antelope Creek Indians. But the site was quarried from about 11000 BC to perhaps the beginning of the 19th century.

Alibates is a wildy beautiful place. It is a National Monument now and offers guided tours of the quarry pits and stone house remains. It is necessary to be accompanied by a ranger at all times when you are actually on the site but this does not really suppress the wonder and awe that the place evokes---and they are nice people. The Rangers will gladly escort a group no larger than one if requested to do so. The visitation to Alibates is sparse. In 1992 only 1349 persons visited the site in the whole year. It is a good place to stand and gaze at what is left of man’s industry thirteen thousand years ago and wonder upon the majesty of man in the universe. You can do that and the Ranger will stand quietly and watch you struggle with your emotions. Go see Alibates before someone builds a McDonald’s there.

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
Posts: 35763

Flint quarries are cool. The oldest in the UK are at Grime's Graves in Norfolk.

Flint is pretty fucking sharp if you chip it right.

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Registered: Nov 2001
Location: Rio de los Brazos de Dios
Posts: 3877

I have not found a flint point on my farm so far. That might be because there are none here or it may be that I am half blind. The farmer next door has a couple of baskets full of arrowhead and lance points. I made a note today to go see if his collection contains any alibates flint. We are about five hundred miles from Alibates but the flint was much more widely dispersed than that.

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oxsan


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Registered: May 2003
Location: N. Texas
Posts: 3493

It sounds well worth the trip!

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Registered: Nov 2001
Location: Rio de los Brazos de Dios
Posts: 3877

It was to me.

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oxsan


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Registered: Oct 2001
Location:
Posts: 18340

There is an old midden (or several) within a days walk of the farm if I'm not mistaken. There are several places along the river that have some interest. It'll be nice if they can get the gravel pits to clean up their mess.

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Registered: Mar 2002
Location: Mountains
Posts: 4715

quote:

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Originally posted by Smug Git
Flint quarries are cool. The oldest in the UK are at Grime's Graves in Norfolk.

Flint is pretty fucking sharp if you chip it right.

---

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Registered: Jan 2001
Location: Denver
Posts: 19702

Whoops, I should have known from the visible avatars that I wasn't logged in as me.

You get the point though.

-m

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Registered: Dec 2002
Location:
Posts: 16655

The farm my family lived on from 1960 to the end of 1966 contained a bit of bottom land where two small streams came together to form a respectable sized creek. Just a few yards below the confluence, there was a flat of about 12 acres in extent, barely above creek level.

Every winter that flat flooded. Consequently, it was an area of thin vegetation, with a few trees along the creek bank. We called it the "Agate Bed", because it was just that - you could pick up agates everywhere across it. On the north edge of the flat there were 5 large, circular mounds covered in tough grass. We soon discovered that the mounds were the remains of indian stone working sites - by pulling up the bunch grass one could expose the chips, misshapen points, and remains of tools.

We collected many hundreds of arrowheads there - virtually all flawed in one way or another, so discarded by their makers. My dad found, on the edge of one mound, a small pit containing the remains of 5 leather bags of arrowheads and lance points, apparently left there by their maker who never returned to recover them.

There are few rocks more beautiful than variegated or banded agates, unless it is moss agates. There are also very few rocks that are harder, or will hold a better edge. Agate is used in many microtomes for sample slicing blades.

My mother still has many of those arrowheads and points we collected - one in particular I wish I had in my hands now. It is a 4.5 inch long, 3 inch wide at the shoulder, lance point of moss agate. Hold it up to the light, and the "moss" inclusions within the translucent matrix look like a group of men walking single file out of a clump of trees.

Oxsan, I had read of the Alibates flints before, but never really thought much about them. I'd like to see that site some day.

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Registered: Apr 2003
Location: I cant say I buy this completely,
Posts: 2542

Someone had to.

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: is futile
Posts: 5048

Flint (chert) is fun stuff.

I helped teach a class on the material science of flint knapping... force cones, types of knapping techniques, core preperation etc., last fall.

It is all good in theory... but I suck at knapping in practice.
Obsidian is easier to work with though... it is a lot crispier than flint.

When i was excavating in near Morgantown, KY... last summer, we mostly found chert artifacts belonging to the archaic period, (which was odd, because we were excavating a mississippian period village).

I will look into posting a couple of shots when I get back to the department tomorrow.

[shameless plug] There is a pic of me from the dig in the fall 2003 issue of "American Archaeology" ... [/shameless plug].

The photographer showed up two days after we had a deluge of rain, flooding the excavation... so we were in the process of minimizing damage... and the exavation looks like shit in the photos.

Oh well.

I give this thread a ++++++

Good read

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