I was looking at a photo of some guy’s collection of stone arrowheads. Being as there are no organics involved, can an arrowhead I made using authentic techniques last week be distinguished from an ancient one?
I presume most such arrowheads are fakes, yes?
(I wonder how long it takes to make one. Not enough to look it up, but you know.)
While they can certainly be faked, why would anyone do that? You can buy them for almost nothing. Did the guy buy them or collect them himself? If he collected them it’s highly unlikely they are fake. Why would someone fake an arrowhead and then through it on the ground?
While a faked arrowhead would look identical to a real one, after all they were both made the same way by hand, if you look under a microscope you should see embedded dirt which would point to its authenticity.
If you buy a bag of them at a roadside tourist trap for a few dollars it’s very possible they are fake, but If you know where to look they are still fairly easy to find laying around…
You could indeed make your own “fake” arrowheads. Lots of people have done this. To be convincing, though, you’d have to learn and study the techniques used in making and shaping flint tools. There’s a considerable breadth to the technology and techniques used by our Stone Age ancestors, and quite a body of books, articles, and videos about it. Look up flint knapping, pressure flaking, baton shaping, flint cores, and the like. Then decide if you think it’s “easy”.
Here’s a start – flint knapping - Google Search
The local residents sell hand-made arrows on the side of the road up near Flagstaff. I assume that they make their own arrowheads.
I bought one for a young cousin of mine, and get it to him with the warning that it was not a toy - those arrowheads are sharp!
Authentic arrowheads can be purchased anywhere from $20-300 each. Replicas cost about 50 cents each. That means there is opportunity for people who would pretend replicas are real. There are ways to tell the difference like patina, mineralization, and evidence of reshaping and use. These can also be faked and it would take a real expert to tell the difference between an actual arrowhead and a highly skilled replica.
I would be very skeptical if he was trying to sell you the arrowheads but if he was just showing them off I would not. Flint knapping arrowheads is not particularly difficult but it takes alot of practice and I think it would be more impressive to make your own arrowheads out of stone than finding them beside a creek.
If you left me alone with some flint and other rocks, I’m confident that I could make something sharp that could be attached to the end of a stick. I’m also confident that it wouldn’t be anywhere remotely near the quality of one made by a professional flint-knapper, who’s been doing it for his whole life. And there are precious few professional flint-knappers around nowadays.
You could make a nice new shiny flaked stone arrowhead that looked exactly like an authentic 'new one, following CalMeacham’s advice.
Things that are much harder to replicate would be the patina or surface weathering from it having lain on/in the soil for perhaps millenia, use damage or hafting residues. These can be cosmetically re-created but this would so much harder to do at a level that would pass expert scrutiny or microscopic inspection.
For obsidian, when a fresh surface is struck there is a slow and incremental formation of a hydration layer as the new surface becomes exposed to the air. This is used as a dating technique, and while the physics of it are understood I expect it would be extremely hard to fake for close examination on an arrow head, where two adjacent flake scars may have different thickness hydration layers.
There are probably quite a few amateur knappers, though.
Sure, I know some people who do flint knapping, and they can make a bunch of different types from different cultures (the 2 I know locally love to do the Clovis style stuff but can do a bunch of others). As noted, you don’t have to fake them, though, as if you are in an area where people lived and used the things they are generally all over the place, along with other tools. I suppose some of the really rare types…ceremonial ones, for instance, or those made with different colored obsidian or the like…might be pretty valuable and might be subject to fakes, but regular ones used for hunting are all over the place and fairly common, so no one would fake those I wouldn’t think except maybe for the tourist trade or something like that.
I hang around a bunch of flintknappers. They have knapping pits at most of the gatherings I go to. Some guys are really good and fast but I think 30 minutes for a good quality point would be considered fast. The can make very high quality replicas indistinguishable from authentic arrow heads without careful examination. I keep meaning to hang out a a pit one day and start learning this but I always wander off into the bow section. Most of the ones I see are very carefully made to be as perfect as possible. More so than an average hunting tip the native Americans would be using as they primarily are used for display but a lot of guys also still hunt with them.
I remember when talking about arrowheads not all that long ago when it might be mentioned that it was a lost art. Well, that has certainly changed. And while the average projectile point is not high dollar, ceremonial spear points and knives are. Many legitimate finds are documented as to where, when and by whom they were found. These carry the highest value.
A friend has his own museum at home and treasures the ones that are well documented. Many of them have photos taken in situ as they were uncovered.
Dennis
Thank you all.
Arrowheads can be faked - there are even techniques for replicating oxidation layers etc. What’s much harder to fake is the stratigraphic context of an actual archaeological site, which is why arrowheads found in situ are the only kind that really matter.
This brings to mind a question I have had for a while; If my friend Jim, a FBI, (Full Blooded Indian), makes an arrowhead today, is it “real” or “fake”?
It was made by a Navaho. He will, or perhaps he has, used it for taking game. To me, it is a “real” Indian arrowhead. What say the masses?
BTW, he says it is REAL! After all, by definition, it is an arrowhead that was made by a real Indian. He even used the traditional techniques & he “blessed it” properly.
I’ll go with “fake.” collecting arrowheads comes with an assumption of “old.” the value is in the idea that it was made by someone hundreds or thousands of years ago, not by your neighbor last weekend.
(On another note, everyone so far has talked about only flint arrowheads, but not all arrowheads are made from flint–my local arrowheads are crudely chipped out of plain quartz.)
It’s real - for what it’s claimed to be.
My dad and uncles walked the fields after big rainstorms, looking for arrowheads. They are ubiquitous in some areas. The hard part is finding whole arrowheads. While sharp, they are brittle, especially after being overturned by plows for a century or more.
If it can be affixed to a shaft and used as ammunition for a bow, then it’s a real arrowhead, even if it’s mass-produced out of modern steel.
If it’s further made out of flint, then it’s a real flint arrowhead.
If it’s made using traditional techniques, then it’s a real traditional flint arrowhead.
If it’s made by a Native American, then it’s a real traditional Indian flint arrowhead.
But if he made it yesterday, then it’s not a real traditional antique Indian flint arrowhead.