Message from the President.

Message from the Editor.

My Turn:  How I Got Scammed Using An Online Artifact Auction.

Projectile Points of the High Plains.

Arrowpack.

To All AACA Members:

                Another good year has passed for artifact collectors, and we at your Association hope that 2006 has been a fruitful one for our collecting membership. However, in many regions of the country, no-till farming continues to rule, making surface collecting of sites much less productive. Increased pressure from new hunters and restrictions from landowners have reduced the numbers of ancient relics found overall. Added to the pressure, many state and federal agencies have re-interpreted or even re-written their archaeological protection laws to restrict surface hunting altogether on all public lands. The overall trend is such that future generations may never know the joy of recovering ancient artifacts from the ground surface.

                What can collectors do? On a personal level, we can speak to our local farmers about the productivity of their no-tilled crops, which eventually falls due to soil compaction. If the farmer is concerned about his bottom line, he may even consider going back to some traditional plowing.

                When private property rights are threatened by new legislation, it is important that landowners and collectors protest those increased restrictions. If we stand by and watch the special interest archaeological lobby create the laws, we will fall prey to their enforcement. Your state collectors’ society plus the collector discussion boards, are good ways of staying informed about proposed changes in the laws. When given the opportunity, it is important for collectors to voice their opinions to their lawmakers, who often only see one side of a situation. With increased emphasis on collecting restrictions, it is also important that our members stay familiar with the laws in their state, and laws affecting public property. It only takes one shovel-wielding skull digger to broadly paint each and every arrowhead collector as a “tomb robber”- even though most artifact collectors stringently avoid breaking any archaeological laws.

                Have a great hunting year in 2007!

Cliff Jackson

AACA President

Greetings AACA Members,

Happy New Years!  I wish all of you the very best in the year 2007.

With the first newsletter of 2007, I hope that I have found you some articles that will be informative, educational and enjoyable to read.

Our first article titled My Turn: How I Got Scammed Using an Online Artifact Auction is the personal story of a friend of mine and a great example of one of the pitfalls of buying artifacts.  Remember that education is always the key to successful collecting in any hobby.

If you are looking to further your artifact education, then perhaps Jeb Taylor’s new book, Projectile Points of the High Plains, is for you.  Tom Westfall has been gracious enough to allow us to publish his review of Jeb’s book.  Thanks Tom for allowing us to use your review.

Continuing as we have in the past AACA newsletters, I have once again brought you a review of a popular artifact chat board.  For those that are not familiar with Arrowpack, I hope that I have been able to pique your interest enough that you will check this site out.  It is worth the few minutes it takes to register.

AACA members please remember that you are the AACA.  This organization’s strength comes from it’s members.  If you have concerns, please do not hesitate to contact one of the directors.  If there are articles that you would like to see in our newsletter or articles that you would like to contribute, you can contact me at the email address below.  This address is a hyperlink, all you need to do is click on it to send an email.  I welcome all suggestions, concerns and questions.

My Turn: How I Got Scammed Using an Online Artifact Auction.

The blank section of my living room wall needed something....something like a display case of arrowheads to go with the bear and Eskimo soapstone carvings on a nearby shelf. Ever since I was a kid growing up in western North Carolina, I had been fascinated by Indian lore. Although I occasionally looked, I never found any artifacts, at least none that I recognized as such. I knew a few people who had collections, but I rarely, if ever, saw any authentic arrowheads for sale. When I was growing up, weekly flea markets had not become a way of life yet. And I had never heard of an "artifact show". Presently, I live in a place where artifact hunting is difficult, not to mention illegal in most areas.

One day several years ago, taking a break from tedious paperwork, I dropped on to the online auction's Home page, logged in, and began thinking about something for which to search, just out of curiosity. Arrowheads. Surely people would be selling arrowheads online. No sooner had I typed the word arrowhead and hit the search button then over 2500 auction items were presented to me!! I couldn't believe what I was seeing: actual authentic arrowheads, of all types, shapes, and sizes, and grades for sale. And most starting prices seemed very reasonable...I supposed, but I actually had no idea what an authentic arrowhead would, or should, be worth.

My experience up to this point with this particular online auction venue had been very good. I had made about 8 to 10 purchases of various things like maps, an old demijohn, model rocket launch pad, antique hand-colored drawings, a banjo, and a few other items. I had learned to steer clear of sellers with less than stellar feedback records, and those that had good records AND high sales volume eased any worries about encountering "bad deals". I assumed that if a high volume seller had nearly perfect feedback, the chances of getting duped were slim. I also assumed that the auction house would never tolerate a seller who defrauded buyers, and such sellers could be identified by telltale feedback [Two classic, although incorrect, assumptions made by the naive and novice bidder.]

Armed and secure with this "knowledge", I set out to daily peruse the arrowhead auctions and see what people were buying and selling and the prices involved. After all, I am a careful sort of guy and wanted to "do my homework" before jumping into the bidding pool. Finally, I placed my first bid, choosing a seller who fit my criteria and had listed what appeared to be very nice arrowheads at good starting prices. The first several I purchased cost me because several other bidders competed with me up to the very end. But I won. I began to bid on points from some other sellers and before long I discovered one who seemed to have a lot of very nice points at very reasonable prices. I began buying almost exclusively from this seller since he had such nice points--well formed and obviously old because of the dirt filling the cracks and crevasses and stained color, something I would later learn was called "patina". He, too, fit my "seller criteria" of having a high volume of transactions with nearly perfect feedback. I reasoned that he must be a reputable seller. [Another classic, equally incorrect, assumption made by the naive and novice bidder.]

All I wanted was a couple dozen or so authentic points for a display case to hang on the wall in my home. Practically before I knew it, I had nearly 40 points, but every day I found new and interesting listings. I was hooked! I continued to bid on, and win points, sometimes several per day. And this new seller I had found continued to list some very nice items. Once, I did notice that all his points were made of the same type of material, and that he seemed to have a large quantity of similar arrowheads to sell, week after week after week! Where did he get all these points? My intuition prompted me to inquire as to the provenance of the points I was currently bidding on. His very friendly and courteous response was " Hi , I don't have any history on the point. I got it at a relic show several years ago. It looks good to me." It looked good to me, too, so I bought it. Two more points later, growing a bit more uneasy, I asked him again about the authenticity of his points, and he replied " Hi...., most of the points I have for sale were bought at relic shows and most of the points came from central Missouri." Once again, I bought the points. All in all, I had spent almost $400 with this seller alone. [I would later learn that this seller was one of the most prolific scammers of fake artifacts who use this particular auction venue, and that he knowingly, and very intentionally, sells these fakes to unsuspecting, naive and novice bidders].

Then, a few days later, I received an email that turned my auction world upside down. The message was simple, but the impact on me was a slap of cold, hard, reality. The message came from someone I did not know, had never corresponded with previously, but who had watched me buy at least several of the 10 arrowheads I won from the seller I've just mentioned. This gracious person simply could stand it no longer to see someone pouring money into auctions for what he knew unequivocally to be fake arrowheads from a scam artist. His message was simply "Do you realize that you have been buying fakes?"

I got one of those sick feelings down deep in my gut...the kind you get when you have done something really stupid and embarrassing. I immediately emailed him for more information. Before that day was out, my learning curve was well into a very steep climb!

After acquiring a list of unethical and scammer sellers who use this particular venue, I discovered that over half of the "authentic" points I had purchased were likely fakes. I sent many points off to a reputable authenticator (at my new friend's suggestion) and learned that my suspicions were indeed correct: All the points were fakes. I was furious...at the sellers, at myself, and at the auction house. How could I have been so easily duped I wondered. I have an advanced degree in a scientific field and my work involves reasoning, scrutinizing, and problem solving. What had gone wrong?

What had gone wrong was the same thing that is going wrong every single day in the online artifact marketplace--particularly and especially at one venue--and that is that naive, novice collectors are using the sites under the pretenses that fraudulent sales and sellers will NOT be tolerated. Like me, these neophytes, armed with more money than knowledge of the artifacts they desire, fall prey to scammers and frauds who troll for these particular bidders. The scammers write clever item descriptions that leave provenance and authenticity vague so that hopeful bidders will take a chance and go for a possible "good deal". Some scammers even offer generous return policies because they know that few of their buyers will suspect the fraud, and even fewer will actually send the item to be examined by an authenticator. For those that do discover they've been duped, the scammer happily makes the refund and then blocks that buyer from ever bidding again....wouldn't want to receive a non-flattering feedback!

Some of you will shake your heads and say "These people [buyers] shouldn't be using these auctions if they don't know enough about artifacts to identify a fake in the first place." And you know, I agree! Completely! And I wish that I had had that foresight. Unfortunately, the reality of the situation is more grim. Unsuspecting people ARE every day buying fakes that they think are authentic artifacts. In addition to perpetuating the scammers and their sales, this occurrence is inundating and diluting the authentic artifact world with fakes. Online auctions are a double edged blade--on the one hand providing unprecedented access to artifacts, worldwide and literally at your fingertips; on the other, providing a new vehicle for scammers and ne'er-do-wells to bilk honest, but naive collectors.

As some experienced and seasoned collectors have astutely stated, fakes and people who knowingly sell fakes have been around for many, many decades--and long before the invention of online auctions. My reply is that pre-online fakes found an extraordinarily smaller audience and marketplace compared to that of today's online fakes. With yesterday's fakes you could pick the piece up at a flea market or show, put it between your fingers, look at it under a hand lens, look the seller square in the eye. My guess is that word quickly got around when someone was trying to sell junk as the real thing. With online auctions of today, tens of thousands of fakes are made available to millions of potential buyers, many of whom naively believe that they are being "protected" by the online venue because the "system" would surely ferret out the bad guys.

What is to be done about this problem? What actions should be taken? This is the question that is hotly debated on several artifact chat boards, at shows, and among the leaders of the most well established artifact associations. The answer is likely not simple, but no action, and relying on the fallback position of "let the buyer beware" will only serve to further demean and diminish the hobby as more and more fakes enter the market.

My first "action" was to contact the sellers and let them know that the points I had purchased from them in good faith had been determined to be fakes and that I wished to return them for a refund. Not surprisingly, only two of the half dozen sellers I contacted returned my money. The others wrote that the return period had expired and/or they discredited all authenticators, regardless of reputation and experience. I could not even leave negative feedback since I already--weeks earlier--left glowing, positive feedback [unfortunately, most of the scammers have glowing to excellent feedback records simply because naive buyers don’t know they’ve been scammed until it’s too late]. Once contacted, each unethical seller blocked me from further bidding on his/her items to guarantee that I could not use the feedback system to alert future bidders.

I then complained to the auction venue. They replied that they could not be accountable for what is sold on their venue. I continued to complain to the egregious sellers. I threatened them with lawsuits. They laughed. I then decided that I could be more effective by running my own auctions in which I listed the very fakes that had been sold to me, only in my auctions, I would tell not only my story, but the "rest of the story" as well--that is, how others, like me, could avoid being scammed in the first place. Soon, the sales numbers and winning bid prices of several of the scammers I was targeting began to falter, then fall. They then retaliated by complaining to the auction venue...after all, the auction description was supposed to be only about the item listed for bids; "other" information was not allowed. My auctions got pulled by the venue, and I simply relisted. The scammers complained, and on and on the dance went. Finally, I got suspended. Even the auction venue admitted that my "heart was in the right place", i.e. they knew darn well what was going on, but were unwilling to publicly address the problem. We compromised and I laid out my "story" and "advice" under a different "section" within Seller Information. Even in this "out-of-the-way" place for my "story", disgruntled scammers scoured my text for even the most minor of "policy" violations, trying to get the venue to suspend my auctions and account. But, I prevailed, and continued to run my auctions and post my "story". I suspect that not nearly as many bidders see my message now that it no longer is stated up front in my auctions, but I like to think that I am continuing to reach people who are just beginning their learning curve about buying artifacts from online auctions. But more needs to be done...closer to the source of the problem: at the auction venue.

One simple start would be for the online auction venues to post a highly visible banner with each artifact auction warning potential bidders that if the piece is not guaranteed authentic, it must be assumed that it is not authentic. The venues should further encourage that all artifacts won online be examined by a professional. However, a more effective, and perhaps preferred, action would be for the auction venues to offer a specific category exclusively for listing artifacts that are unconditionally guaranteed to be authentic. Strict enforcement of this policy would quickly weed out scammers and other infringers. Other categories for listing points of vague or unknown authenticity would be essentially the current marketplace, i.e. buyer beware, it's probably not authentic! My guess is that most scammers could not make enough profit simply selling their junk in the "junk" category. For THAT is the scam...make a modern point--worth only a few dollars--appear (with fake patina, clever descriptions, poor photographs) to be an ancient artifact worth many times more than the asking price.

As a parting comment, I'll say that although lawsuits are one way to compel change in the business world, grassroots efforts are simpler, cheaper, and probably more effective since it's still the pocketbook that ultimately directs a company's policies. The online auction venues need to hear from serious collectors and our organizations.

Projectile Points of the High Plains

New Perspectives on Typology Based on

Examinations of Original Type Site Specimens

                                                                                                                                                         By Jeb Taylor

Review by: Tom Westfall

I’ve been an avid avocational archaeologist for more than forty years. When I first began my quest for all things ancient, I sought out reading material from my local library to help me understand and interpret the stone and bone fragments I was finding scattered about eroded areas of the high plains.  Virgil Russell’s book, Indian Artifacts, and Marie Wormington’s book entitled, Ancient Man in North America, were the two available, and I devoured them voraciously.  Over the ensuing years, I’ve read hundreds of books, and thousands of professional papers on various aspects of archaeology.  All have left me hungry and wanting more.  I am extremely pleased to be reviewing Jeb Taylor’s book entitled, Projectile Points on the High Plains, as metaphorically, I have found it to be a very filling, multi-course meal; one that is aesthetically pleasing, intellectually stimulating and historically important.

The high plains have been inhabited for thousands of years. Taylor correctly assesses that “expressions of personal and cultural identities are either intangible—language, belief systems, etc., or perishable (clothing, hair styles, personal adornments, etc.”) and that the examination of the existence of these people is often dependent upon durable stone tools and weapons recovered from sites where big game animals were killed and processed.  Stone tools are often very generic, and perhaps due to functionality, little morphological change occurred in these tool forms over time.  On the other hand, projectile points have changed dramatically through the years and a careful assessment of their temporal uniqueness provides good information about their specific ages.  Thus a thorough examination of projectile points is a valid criterion for identifying when their makers lived, where they traveled and perhaps even who they were, in terms of their place in this land’s prehistory.

Following a discussion of the problems associated with the development of a “cultural chronology”, Taylor solves this dilemma by recognizing “specific overlapping cultural periods.” He defines these periods through projectile point morphology, which are “determined by a combination of climatic, temporal and spatial considerations.”  Cultural periods, therefore, exist for a specific period of time, but not necessarily as isolated entities—in other words, more than one cultural period may exist at any given time.  This analysis, aided by a well-done, and highly understandable chart, will add significantly to the reader’s understanding of plain’s archaeology.  In all, Taylor has identified eleven “cultural periods” beginning with Clovis and ending with metal trade points.

No work on the high plains would be complete without a description of the region being defined, and Taylor does an excellent job establishing boundaries to the high plains and giving a brief analysis of the climatic changes to this area through time. Following this, Taylor goes into a thorough examination of stone. Although this discussion may be a bit too scientific for many of us non-geologically oriented collectors, nonetheless, it is extremely well-done, and to the extent possible, Taylor makes it both readable and understandable.  Of particular interest is the presence of hundreds of color photos, most all taken by the author, illustrating various stones, along with a written description of the stone’s essential features, its geological “history” and its location(s). Without a doubt, this is the most comprehensive analysis of “stone” available to the public in a general publication.

A chapter on “Projectile Point Morphology” is followed by one on “Hafting Principles and Strategies” and both of these offer valuable insights to the discerning reader.  Subsequent to these chapters, the real fun begins for those of us who love the discussion of high plains projectile points, as the remaining 300 pages are devoted to an analysis of projectile points from the original type sites, along with relevant observations and insights.  Each of the aforementioned “cultural periods” is highlighted and the discussion is punctuated with full-size, color photos.

Though somewhat brief, Taylor also addresses knives and endscrapers, and concludes the book with a thoughtful discussion of archaeology and “responsible collecting.” A glossary of terms and an extensive bibliography adds to the overall value of this work. Taylor is the consummate avocational archaeologist, yet his work reflects the finest in professional archaeology. 

In the introduction Taylor states that his main purpose in writing the book was two-fold—“to impart an acceptable level of understanding regarding the specific morphologies” (of projectile points) through an exhaustive review of type site material, and to “address the study of tool stone in a professional manner” using a geological perspective.  He acknowledges however, that it truth, he wrote this book because it was the book “I always wanted to find at a library or book store, the one that provided straight forward answers to my many questions.”  After reviewing this outstanding treatise, I would agree—this is the premier work on high plains projectile points.  It is a treasure trove of valuable information, presented in a highly organized, very readable format.  This is a “must have” book for both professional and avocational archaeologists with an interest in high plains archaeology and collecting.

Tom Westfall  8/7/06

by

Kim Radke

Of all of the popular artifact chat boards, Arrowpack is a personal favorite of mine.

Started in December of 1998, Arrowpack’s registered members now number over 1100 from 10 different countries.  Owner Shane Pendergrass of TN states that servicemen located in foreign countries are reading the boards of Arrowpack.

Although various artifact chat boards resemble each other in many ways, Apack is known for its Be Aware board, which sets it apart.  This part of the board is specifically used by the members to warn other collectors about the sale of fraudulent Native American artifacts.  With the online auction houses becoming the latest craze, the sale of fake artifacts has also risen.  Apack is the place to post information that will warn other buyers about the artifact fraud taking place or to ask for information about a particular seller.

Fraud is not the only topic discussed on Arrowpack.  Many of the members share photos of their own collections, ask questions regarding lithic material, typology or simply make announcements that are of interest to other artifact collectors.  Because many of the members know each other on a personal level, it is not unusual to see many various topics being discussed that do not pertain to artifacts.  As with other chat boards, there is a hometown friendliness on Apack.

Besides the Be Aware board, Apack boasts forums pertaining to typology, artifact sales, in-situ pictures and personal finds.  The artifact show calendar is always kept up to date and the site contains a list of artifact authenticators.

In the spring of 2006, changes were made to upgrade the old board into a new, more secure format.  Many of the members enjoyed the look of the new board and liked the new-fangled perks such as the personal messaging system and the casino.  Others preferred the old board and so recently it was decided that the old board would continue to run.  Members now have a choice between the upgraded board and the older version of Arrowpack.

If you are looking for a place to meet other collectors of Native American artifacts, learn more about artifact fraud or simply would like to check out what other collectors are talking about then Arrowpack is a site you should consider visiting.  New members are warmly welcomed and the only necessary requirement to register is a valid email address.