Yuck Isn’t Always Bad, Etley and Wadlow	by David Marolf
Central States Archaeological Societies 2021 October Journal	Manchester, Iowa

 

This excerpt from "Yuck Isn’t Always Bad, Etley and Wadlow" published in the 2021 Central States Archaeological Societies 2021 October Journal Read the complete column in the Central States Archaeological Societies 2021 October Journal which can be purchased on-line after March 2022

Etley point (4 ½” x 1 ¾”) found in Louisa County, Iowa.

There is a stream I occasionally walk that turns to yuck on its very upper reaches. For many years its steep upper watershed has had too much tillage and has been very heavily over-pastured. Why farmers do this I'll never know as it ultimately destroys their land and their beautiful stream, as well as their neighbor's! I won't go on and on about how some folks treat their property, but what I have seen happen to the prettiest clear flowing streams since I was a child could only be described as sewership, not stewardship! I usually turn around before I get to this upper reach that was once a beautiful hardwood forest because it is always muddy and full of cattle tracks. Once in 2013, I had the time to expend the effort to yuck my way upstream scanning the few visible rocks and sinking over my ankles in the mud, pocked with cattle tracks most every step. I finally got to a place even the cattle couldn't go and there lying fully exposed among some other rocks was a nice corner notched point (Fig. 1). I took it with me to an artifact show, and the consensus of other collectors identified it as an Etley point. One guy even offered me $300 for it, but my stuff is way too valuable to me to sell. This Etley is 4 ½” x 1 ¾” wide, is made of white and gray mottled Burlington chert and has very good patina. I have been told it has been anciently re-sharpened three times, once along the side of the blade that has the longer tang and twice along the shorter tanged side. The re-sharpening processes shortened and narrowed this hafted knife blade by a significant amount. And I thought yuck was always bad!

In 2015, on a trip to visit relatives in Clio, Iowa, I decided to hike up a stream just across the border in Mercer County, Missouri. It is a beautiful gravely stream, lined with cottonwood and silver maple trees that winds down out of a watershed for about two miles through upland hardwood forests, hay fields and pasturel and before spilling into a major river. It is a wellmanaged watershed, so the stream stays gravelly and silt free. When my father was a young man, a guy everyone called Dutch ....

 

Read the complete column in the Central States Archaeological Societies 2021 October Journal which can be purchased on-line after March 2022