Early Fall 2002 Bill Arnold (Texas Digger) and his fiance Gail excavated this wonderful cache of tools on thier property along the Lampasas river in Burnet County . All the photos on this first page were taken by Gail or Bill.
Bill was kind enough to allow me to document the cache and share this story and information with everyone.
Thanks again, Amigo!
All of this was left together in one cache.
It was in close proximity to an ancient fire pit, about 150 feet from the edge of the bluff overlooking the Lampasas river. This is in a huge campsite on the south side of the river that has been occupied for many thousands of years.
The big metate, or grinding stone, was found buried upside down.
Buried at the edge of the metate was a big uniface blade, a finely flaked knife and a cornertang knife!
As you can see there was even a big buffalo bone left with the knife blades.
Here are all three blades as they were found laying stacked on each other.
Got one out. Two more to recover.
Two of them are out now. Notice the cornertang is still buried in the soil! Bill said he thought the first two looked like cornertangs. There was only one way to find out if that last one was or not. Think you could have stopped to take another picture at this point?
Here's a Happy TxDigger Bill with all three blades just out of the ground.
The metate is visible there along with the hammer and screwdriver that Bill had to use to carefully dig below the fragile blades to extract them from the sun baked soil.
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Bill was kind enough to allow me to document the cache and share this story and information with everyone.
Thanks again, Amigo!
All of this was left together in one cache.
It was in close proximity to an ancient fire pit, about 150 feet from the edge of the bluff overlooking the Lampasas river. This is in a huge campsite on the south side of the river that has been occupied for many thousands of years.
The big metate, or grinding stone, was found buried upside down.
Buried at the edge of the metate was a big uniface blade, a finely flaked knife and a cornertang knife!
As you can see there was even a big buffalo bone left with the knife blades.
Here are all three blades as they were found laying stacked on each other.
Got one out. Two more to recover.
Two of them are out now. Notice the cornertang is still buried in the soil! Bill said he thought the first two looked like cornertangs. There was only one way to find out if that last one was or not. Think you could have stopped to take another picture at this point?
Here's a Happy TxDigger Bill with all three blades just out of the ground.
The metate is visible there along with the hammer and screwdriver that Bill had to use to carefully dig below the fragile blades to extract them from the sun baked soil.
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There are limitless possibilities for exactly how the cache came to be there. Maybe by comparing this group of ancient tools to others we will be able to learn some of the secrets that were left here for us.
Talking to Bill I am learning a lot about the cornertang in the Burnet/Lampasas/Bell county area. Bill is very well qualified here, having found over ten whole Cornertangs! This may be a record, at least it is to my knowledge. Most collectors hunt for a lifetime without finding their first one.
The Castroville people appear to be the origination of the cornertang technology in Central Texas, but the majority of cornertangs were made by the later Marcos and Ensor people. Like Ensor points and the Ensor culture San Saba knife, almost all cornertangs are masterfully made ancient works of art.
There are other offset knives in the area, but none are as drastically offset as the cornertang.
There are at least three forms of cornertangs in Central Texas, plus the related mid-back tang.
Anytime you start finding "strange" things, you should really slow down and dig extra carefully. For example Bill tells the story of the guy who found several antlers together and right afterward shattered a killer cornertang with one misplaced swing of his pick.
Be sure to check the 2nd page out for my close up photos of the Cornertang cache!
Talking to Bill I am learning a lot about the cornertang in the Burnet/Lampasas/Bell county area. Bill is very well qualified here, having found over ten whole Cornertangs! This may be a record, at least it is to my knowledge. Most collectors hunt for a lifetime without finding their first one.
The Castroville people appear to be the origination of the cornertang technology in Central Texas, but the majority of cornertangs were made by the later Marcos and Ensor people. Like Ensor points and the Ensor culture San Saba knife, almost all cornertangs are masterfully made ancient works of art.
There are other offset knives in the area, but none are as drastically offset as the cornertang.
There are at least three forms of cornertangs in Central Texas, plus the related mid-back tang.
Anytime you start finding "strange" things, you should really slow down and dig extra carefully. For example Bill tells the story of the guy who found several antlers together and right afterward shattered a killer cornertang with one misplaced swing of his pick.
Be sure to check the 2nd page out for my close up photos of the Cornertang cache!
