I Can Dig It

I found an arrowhead yesterday, in my front yard. It came from an old pile of gravel I discovered while turning the ground to enlarge a flowerbed. The gravel is under about two to three inches of topsoil and covers about 24 square feet of ground. At first, I toyed with the idea of simply working over it, removing the grass and letting it be. But then I thought perhaps it was one of the reasons the chinquapin was doing so poorly. There was no subsoil for root growth. Thus, it became gravel removal time.

I built a rough sieve by placing a piece of hardware cloth between two saw-horses and got to work. Shovel of load of dirt and gravel. Work it to let dirt and small pieces fall through. Pick out anything interesting and roll the rest into a wheelbarrow. That’s how I found the arrowhead. I started noticing pieces of flint along with bits of glass. I slowed down. Then there it was. It was the shape that caught my eye, manmade, a triangle that had been knapped. Tiny, a little bigger than my thumbnail. I put it with the little odds and ends I’d found and showed it to my son.

It was then I discovered that Pedernales was Spanish for flint. We opined that perhaps my great-grandfather had hauled it up from the river when he built the smokehouse that still stands or even the rock wall that lines the front of the property. It was a nice to touch history in such a way, from family all the way back to original settlers. Today, I’ll add another filter layer to catch more small things, and see what it brings. The flowerbed can wait. I’m time traveling.