Central States Archaeological Societies
Central States Archaeological Societies

THE MARILYN CACHE

Shaun Patrick Dailey

Central States Archaeological Societies 1999 July Journal
Waukesha, Wisconsin
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THE MARILYN CACHE

The entire cache (as of August ,1998) of 80 pieces. The largest blade in the cache is 5 7/8 inches long and 3 3/4 inches wide. The smallest is 2 3/8 inches long and 2 inches wide. It is possible more will be unearthed. From the collection of Shaun P. Dailey.

pieces appear to have been heat treated, and all of them are percussion flaked. The blades were chipped and ground into shape, probably at the quarry site, and brought here for storage, as no chips or flakes are in this field. The buried group covered an area of twenty-four inches by eighteen inches to a depth of twelve inches. The artifacts were buried in sand. The nearest water source is three quarters of a mile away. The chart itself has different colors, ranging from white to gray to bluish-gray with spots and stripes. No other artifacts in this area have been found made from this material. In fact, my Uncle Tim and I found only one other arrowhead in this field.

How old is this cache? Some of the pieces are cruder in workmanship than other caches I have seen. I made an appointment with two local professional archaeologists, David Overstreet and James A Clark, Jr. of the Great Lakes Archaeological Research Center, to see if they could answer that question. From our phone

conversation, I think they were expecting to see a Hopewell cache, but maybe it's not. I was told that it resembles a cache found at the Cummins site, near Lake Superior, near Thunder Bay in Ontario, Canada. The Cummins site has a carbon date from the Paleo time period. I am presently trying to contact the Cummins site archaeologist, Bill Ross, to compare notes. When I receive more information, I will supplement this report.

I would like to thank Richard and Jim Grybush, who helped to identify the material and its origin. Richard and Jim support Overstreet and Clark theories of a Paleo cache. I am also grateful to my friend Jeff Johnson, for the use of his camera equipment to help record my find and also my mother, Leanlle Lent, who typed, edited, and reedited this article. This article is named for and dedicated to my grandmother Marilyn Lent.

 

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