Authentic Artifact Collectors Association

Founded 1998

SPRING Newsletter 2005 Volume 3, Issue 1

Editor: Grier Brunson Web Publishing: Jim Fisher

I. President's Message

II. Art or Artifact? – D. Waite   

III. In Situ - Announcement

IV. ArrowheadAuctions.com & Arrowheads.com Merger

V. Press Release: Only The Rocks Last Forever

VI. The Bait and Switch or the Bunko Two-Step – G. Brunson, Editor

Message from the President

Dear Members,

The AACA membership is growing and as such the association gains more strength and influence with each day that passes. I am pleased to report that more than 200 new members have been added to our membership over the past 4 months. It seems clear that the rules of ethical conduct espoused by the AACA membership are realizing their intended effect. While mediations involving AACA members are still sometimes necessary, they are infrequent. This success is due to the efforts of the rank and file members who uphold the association’s values and serve as the eyes and ears of the AACA.

If you have not already joined ARROW (the Affliated Real Relic Owners Webring: http://www.arrowring.com, I encourage you to do so at your earliest convenience. This webring has been organized by AACA members Matt Rowe and Cliff Jackson. One of the criteria for inclusion in the ARROW webring is membership in the AACA. This is a great way for AACA members to surf the web and quickly review artifact related sites whose owners have an affiliation with our association. Links to ARROW can also be found on the AACA home page and at the top of the members’ links page.

The 3^rd Annual AACA National Ancient American Artifact Exposition is drawing nearer. If you have not yet reserved table space and wish to do so, please initiate that process as soon as possible. Table space is still available for both returning vendors and newcomers. Please visit the Expo website at http://www.theaaca.com/show for more details. We are pleased to announce that amongst our educational seminar speakers will be Mr. Wm. Jack Hranicky of Virginia who will discuss Pre-Clovis in the Western Hemisphere. Mr. Hranicky is the author of Prehistoric Projectile Points Found Along the Atlantic Coastal Plain (Universal Publishers, 2003).

I would like to ask the assistance of all AACA members in helping to publicize our annual Expo. It is my hope that the AACA can remain an association that offers free membership to all who pledge to support our goals and rules of conduct. The proceeds from the Expo play an integral part in ensuring that membership remains free and that the association can continue to cover its operating expenses. Please send a link or email our online Expo flyer to anyone who you feel may have an interest in attending this fine relic show in Fort Mitchell Kentucky. The online show flyer can be found at http://www.theaaca.com/show/Expo05flyer.htm. If you are willing to distribute hard copy flyers at a local show or archaeology association meeting you plan to attend in the near future please contact me via e-mail and I would be happy to send you some. If you have a website I would also ask that you help to publicize the Expo by adding a banner link such as those found at the bottom of the Expo reservation page: http://www.theaaca.com/show/Reservation.htm .

Finally, I would like to publicly acknowledge the contributions of AACA member Aaron Kilander who responded to my search for a new volunteer webmaster. Aaron has done a great job of attending to the nearly daily demands of maintaining the AACA website and responding to the needs of the membership.

I hope to see many of you at the Expo in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky in July!

Jim Fisher
President, AACA

Art or Artifact?

by Dave Waite

What is it that you see when viewing a piece of pottery? How do you interpret the piece of fired clay you are looking at? What I see is a complex and interesting story that spans two thousand years of history in North America. From the beginning of a dish woven of vegetable fibers lined with mud, to the latest electric fired rainbow ornamented masterworks of today's contemporary artists, the clay still holds its charm. What is nothing more than dirt becomes useful and beautiful when the hands of man and woman work it and express their spirits as artisans. It began as a utilitarian way to heat food in a combustible basket, and once the nature of the clay was understood, it became a tradition for most Native peoples. Each group had its own designs and forms, dictated by their needs and later their desires. The earliest forms were bowls and jars needed to hold liquids for cooking. They lacked ornamentation and were functional as a first priority. Some of the manufacturing traces were of some degree ornamental and in time these became art forms in their own right. The original corrugated surface was a product of the coil method of building a pot, the interior was smoothed for utility, and the exterior was left as made. There was no experimentation with pigments or ornamentation in the early times, and the rough surface of the corrugations actually helped with heat transfer. This benefit was retained even after the development of the earliest corrugated designs using incised or impressed elements in an artistic pattern. The earliest patterns were similar to the designs the basket makers had used while weaving. Geometric patterns were the easiest to make in basketry and thus the earliest impressed designs were geometric as well. Another aspect of the various clays used was the color of the clay after firing. It was to become the next artistic element in the creation of commonly used pottery. Some clays fire a bright red, others are gray, white, orange, tan, and even black.

The color depends on composition and firing temperature and the presence of oxygen during firing or the lack of it. By varying the temperature or sealing the kiln from outside air many variations in color could be obtained. Another simple technique was smoothing the exterior surface to a high polish with a smooth pebble. Polishing in the beginning was to help seal the clay and improve water holding ability, but it developed into a fine art form with mirror surfaces being possible. The addition of a thin outer coating of another color of clay was also used to decorate a vessel which would be drab gray otherwise. Fine white kaolinite was in high demand in later times as a background for the striking pigments and designs that were coming. Multiple colors of pigments were developed from plant juices and animal fats, often mixed with minerals they provided a palette of color for what was now an artistic as well as useful item of everyday life. The designs of nature and symbolism began to emerge as the popular motifs. Clouds and sun symbols, rain drops and rivers, all became the patterns as they were vital to the life of the early peoples. Animal forms and representations of humans entered as the artists wanted to tell a story with their work. Many of the designs were used on ceremonial pottery and only a few might see those, it was the beginning of a portable form of writing. The only other early written forms were pictographs and petroglyphs. Undoubtedly there were designs painted or woven into clothing, but the pottery could survive while the perishables turned to dust.

Forms became elaborate as well, in time figural objects were made with animal and anthropomorphic shapes being made. As time went by experimentation became rampant because now pottery had become a trade item. It had progressed from utility to ceremonial and then to a form of currency in some areas. The groups without the natural resources or skills would trade what they had for ceramics. Everybody needed a canteen didn’t they, and what male could resist giving his woman a beautiful dish?

Pottery was a way to expand the talents and imaginations of men and women for hundreds of years. The highest expressions of artistic creativity were in this medium for most groups. They were known for their works and whole communities had developed commerce in pottery as a life way through the trade relationships they formed. How sad it was what happened next.

With the civilization of the native groups by the newly arrived explorers, the production and use of pottery suffered a death blow. What had been accepted as the way to hold liquids and cook in was almost immediately replaced by the superior metal vessels of the explorers. Metal was more durable and almost indestructible. The native peoples had never mastered metal working except for a few examples using native ores.

The new arrivals quickly learned the value in giving metal pots to natives, just imagine the time and efforts saved by having a pot that didn’t wear out or break. All the time it took to keep folks in dishes could now be put to better use. In a single stroke pottery was dead and all the artisanship forgotten, all in the name of progress. We all know what the better use of time involved for the natives, as they became slaves of the explorers.

It was hundreds of years later before pottery was again an art form, and all had to be relearned from the past. When the native peoples needed a way of subsistence other than relying on government to keep them, the revival of pottery making as a native tradition was reborn. There were economic advantages to be had for a new product, and the pottery revival among native peoples was off and running. The early 20th century saw a rebirth of pottery as art, and the utilitarian aspects were forgotten. Ancient shards were found and replication of designs and forms began. The market now determined what was made and that continues to this day. Some native artisans tried to maintain the ancient ways, but the mass production of electric kilns and slip cast forms is hard to resist and most buyers don’t know the difference.

Discriminating collectors of contemporary pottery still prefer the old way but that is a vanishing art form due to simple economics. Foreign made and non native made pottery has intruded into the market diluting the economic advantage the native peoples had for a while. Fortunately there are some regulations in place to protect the cultural aspects, and true artisanship still exists though it is rare to find and expensive. The modern trend is to produce even more exotic and, in my mind at least, gaudy pieces. Laser cut designs, turquoise embellishments, rainbow colors never seen in ancient times are now a part of contemporary pottery made by today’s native peoples. Make what sells is the trend.

I wrote this to ask you to consider what we have to remember.

I remember the first shard I studied, it was ancient and I was amazed at the condition it had maintained through time. The design was striking, vibrant color remained, and as I learned later, the skill of the maker was evident. How could these ancient primitives produce something so lasting without even knowledge of the wheel? I spent seven years learning the answers to my questions. Only by laying hands on the clay could I grasp what the ancients had known for centuries. The secret of the clay is that of oneness with nature, and it is indeed a spiritual experience to help a lump of Mother Earth become something man can use. All potters know you can’t force clay into what it doesn’t want to be, you can guide it but you must honor its nature or it will return to the formless state it rests in.

Think about these ideas when you next see a pottery vessel, it is up to you to decide whether it is art or artifact, or as I see it, both.

In Situ - Announcement

I just wanted to take a moment to let AACA members know that the first issue of the In Situ Online Publication has been completed and is available for download or viewing (free). So please take a look at the In Situ photos captured by fellow collectors.

In Situ can be found at the following web address:

http://www.arrowheads.com/insitu.htm

Take care and happy hunting,

David Heath

ArrowheadAuctions.com Merges with Arrowheads.com.

ArrowheadAuctions.com has merged into Arrowheads.com replacing Yourbay.com as the auction format for the site. Yourbay will phase out as the current listings there come to a close.

This combination should be a favorable positioning of ArrowheadAuctions.com to further enhance its place as the fastest growing alternative auction site to eBay for the artifact community. Nothing about the site will change. It will remain free for unlimited listings through 2005 and will initiate an annual $25 membership for unlimited selling by 2006 right on schedule.

The major impact should be in the greater ease with which members of the online artifact community will be able to find and enjoy the services of the site. I certainly hope this will quicken the pace in creating a vibrantly active market place for collectors and dealers to enjoy.

Karl Kilguss

Administrator

Arrowheadauctions.com

Press Release 4/19/05: Only The Rocks Last Forever

Tom Westfall’s new artifact book, Only The Rocks Last Forever, was released this past week by Bookman Publishing Company of Franklin, Indiana. This book is a collection of essays on various aspects of artifact collecting and includes site reports, discussions of collector ethics, notes on well-known collectors, including the late Tom Pomeroy of Sterling, Earl and Alice Mustain of Yuma, Ed Gregory of Ordway, and Bert Mountain of Otis, and personal accounts of meaningful artifact adventures. Printed in an 8 ½” by 11” format, the book includes numerous annotated photographs of high plains artifacts from many different collections.

Westfall is a writer, parent educator, and retired social services practitioner, living on the eastern plains of Colorado, near the small town of Wray. A native Coloradoan, he has been actively involved in avocational archaeology for nearly 40 years. The family’s collection of artifacts is routinely studied by numerous professional archaeologists. Just this past week, Drs. Steve Holen and Mark Muniz, with the Denver Museum of Nature and Science were guests at the Westfall home while they made a presentation to the Wray and Idalia Schools on various aspects of archaeology and examined an assemblage of Clovis artifacts the Westfalls recently found in Kit Carson County.

Tom is a Board member of AACA, (Authentic Artifact Collector’s Association) an Associate Editor of Prehistoric American Magazine, a member of the Loveland Archaeology Association, and has written two previous books on artifact collecting—Flint Chips and Pottery Shards, and Mostly Sand and Gravel. This upcoming fall, Westfall is one of the featured speakers at the Stone Age Fair in Loveland, Colorado, along with Dr. Michael Collins (University of Texas) and Dr. James Dixon, (Alaskan Studies, University of Colorado.) Westfall will be presenting a paper entitled, The History of Archaeology in Yuma County, Colorado.

Westfall’s “artifact adventure anthologies” detail 40 years of collecting on the plains, but in many ways, artifact collecting is merely the stage upon which the author discusses his love of the high plains, the building of strong family ties through a shared hobby, and the esoteric connectedness that is often experienced when finding stone reminders of this land’s prehistory. Westfall is married to Myra, a Middle School Principal, in Wray. They have two children, Dr. Grayson Westfall, a family medicine practitioner, and Erin Westfall, a 3^rd year medical student.

“Only The Rocks Last Forever” will soon be available through many regional and on-line bookstores. Local orders for this book, which retails at $14.95, may be made through Flintridge Enterprises, PO Box 143, Wray, 80758. Tom Westfall, contact, 970-332-4506.

The Bait and Switch or the Bunko Two-Step

by Grier Brunson

Early in 2004, Craig Jones walked into a fancy southwest Antique Mall, accompanied by his wife of thirty years, and his in-laws, looking for nothing in particular, but glad to have escaped the Wisconsin winter for a few precious weeks. They had resisted the grand prices of Santa Fe heirlooms, and were now absently hoping for something genuinely western to take home.

Four miles away, the dishonest man that Craig was destined to meet today, was fishing small pieces of flint out of a decidedly rusty bucket in his back yard. Not bad, thought Howie the Snake, not bad at all. The flint pieces were knapped reproductions of generic notched points that Howie had been “aging” in his own rusty home brew for three weeks. His mind raced ahead to the profits he would soon wring out of some overzealous “mullet” as he termed his marks.

At the Mall, Craig’s wife let her eyes drift over old Coke signs, ancient binoculars, and the standard detritus found in these upscale antique malls across America. Then she saw them: beautiful ancient arrowheads and spearpoints, each in their own glass case and each bearing a suitably old-looking label describing the particular artifact. “Honey, look at this!” she called. Her relatives ambled over and gazed at the obviously neglected treasures under glass. “Hey,” said Craig, “those are real.” “I told you those things back at the truck stop were too cheap to be real.” They hurried over to the mall manager desk, and asked whose arrowheads were in that corner display over there. “Oh, that’s Howie’s bin....I’ll get him for you, and she pushed in a speed-dial number on her cellphone.

Howie the Snake recognized the calling number, and knowing Amy only called him when she had a “live one”, he answered this one. After the obligatory negotiating, Howie just said, “Listen, those are pretty expensive museum-grade artifacts. I’ve got some frames of arrowheads here at home, that you will like just as well, and I can make them affordable. How long are you in town?” Howie the Snake liked the answer and the reptilian smile for which he was named, broke over his face. “Why don’t you meet me at the Denny’s Restaurant over on old Route 66? Say half an hour?” Howie liked the feel of setting the hook.

He keyed the security lock on his artifact room, entered and opened the sliding door of the closet. Several stacks of Riker frames looked back at him. On the wall shelves behind him were cracked pots, Kokopelli figures, Kachina dolls, fake pipe bowls, frames of barbed wire, Corn Maiden effigies, flutes and other eccentric lures. He selected three frames and slid them carefully into a rabbit skin pouch. Within minutes, he pulled into the Denny’s parking lot, driving his dusty, dented ancient pickup. The old camper top was a stroke of genius. Naturally, the snowbirds were early, and they easily picked out the arrowhead hunter’s pickup.

Craig and his relatives pored over the stained reproductions in the frames, while Howie talked. “Oh, that one’s about $35; these two are normally about $15 each, but I’ll make you a package deal. Any two frames for $225.” Craig felt the edges of the single authentic point in a frame; it sure felt worn, and the little dings reassured him. It was field grade, but the best arrowhead Craig had ever seen. Finally, they agreed and money changed hands. Howie said, “Let’s have some iced tea in there, and talk a little.” In the course of the next half-hour, he proposed to meet them in the morning right here, have breakfast, and he would lead them to some ruins where they could all hunt points together. The Wisconsin bunch were excited to accept quickly, and went back to their RV campground to get ready for the adventure.

Howie the Snake, on the other hand, only made a quick stop at his house to gather up a dozen fake points, several field grade rocks, and one bone awl from his favorite supplier. He drove northwest for 45 minutes, passing through upscale suburbs, and onto caliche ranch roads. Opening three gates, the Mexican ranch hands gave him no notice....they knew Howie pretty well, and he went down to the Pueblo ruins in the broken land of the Rio Puerco drainage, on a regular basis.

Howie found a good spot and walked for about 10 minutes on the bare rock overhangs, carefully placing his goods and filtering some sand and sticks over the points from his pocket. He dropped off the caprock, and slid the bone awl under the edge of a large rock near a small rock shelter, careful to dust out his Reebok tracks. The site was now well-salted, and an hour later, he pulled into his driveway and hunted up a beer, satisfied with his preparations.

The next morning, the party assembled bright and early, at the designated meeting place. This time Howie was driving a late model SUV, and he directed the whole group to just ride with him, to save time. Taking a more rustic route, the party eventually wound up peering at small cliff houses and shelters in the river drainage. They had accepted the conditions, namely that they split all finds 50/50 at the end of the day.

Within an hour, Howie had “found” several arrowheads, and the marks had been steered to ten more. Everybody was excited as Howie led them back to the SUV and drove a winding route through the maze of draws and flood plains. This was The Tour. It cemented credibility, particularly because of Howie’s secretive behavior. He finally stopped at the pre-selected rock shelter, and the hunters spread out. A dusty hour later, nobody had come up with anything, and Howie chirped, “I’m going over by those big rocks....I’ve had luck there before.” He knelt and sifted sand through his fingers, quickly coming up with the planted awl. His Spanish swear words sounded great. He held up the point, and the rest came running to see the unbelievable lucky find. “Listen, this is rare,” he exclaimed. “This looks Anasazi to me, and it’s thousands of years old!” Only moments later, Howie came up with a hafted atlatl dart, which he declared worth $1200. Howie the Snake was having an All-World hunting day, beating staggering odds, but his marks didn’t know that.

They all placed their finds on the foldout tailgate, and Howie announced, “Okay, we pool all the finds, and you get half.” Craig thought about that and blurted, “What about that hafted dart....would you sell them to me?” “Well,” Howie said, “I usually don’t do that. I can but I’ll give you two frames of Florida points for your half share.” Craig and his relatives wanted them. Just think, 21 real arrowheads, two frames of Florida artifacts, and all this adventure for $200! They drove back to the restaurant parking lot very pleased with their day, and Howie tucked some papers with color pictures and prices in Craig’s pocket to take home, saying “I can send you these by mail if you like any of them.” The Wisconsin relatives chattered happily back to the campground. Craig pored over the photographs, and marked the ones he liked, marked “Texas,”and “Okla”. Then he made a major mistake: he stopped and called Howie the Snake with his selections. He would mail a $2,000 check, and on receipt, Howie would mail them to his home.

Three weeks later, the travelers made it home, and Craig showed his artifacts to friends and coworkers, embellished by tales of cliff dwellings, spine-tingling ruins, and old cowboys with coffee cans of ancient arrowheads. But when his cousin saw the points, he didn’t much like their looks, and told Craig about his suspicions, suggesting that he send them to an authenticator expert he knew of. Within a week, the authenticator’s report was back, and it wasn’t good. All of the points Craig had mailed for examination were fakes, in the words of the authenticator, “covered with a binding agent, petroleum jelly, and foreign matter. The obsidian points are re-chipped from lithic scatter.” Frantic calls to Howie got no answer. Their friendly dealings were over, and Howie was 1,000 miles out of reach.

Howie the Snake had big ideas now, and he decided to take the salting concept to a new level. He started acquiring freshly knapped Clovis and Folsom fakes, and aging them in his own brew of wood stain, rusty nails and manure. How quickly he had forgotten his prison term of years earlier for mail fraud. He began setting a trap line for bigger victims: wealthy, greedy and naive was the right combination. He flies in clients from the East, for a guaranteed Paleo hunt at a flat $10,000 per trip, client keeps all finds. Unbelievably, multiple Clovis and Folsom finds started occurring with regularity, and Howie’s luck hasn’t run out yet. He remains at large.

The names and locations of this story have been fictionalized by necessity, but the details are absolute fact. The photographs accompanying this story are the actual photos used in the con game described by the author.

The Editor