It won't let me add a reply to my orignal post, so here is a new one.
Got up around noon and thought about going to the river to hang out. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do something different, so I decided to ride up to Cotaco Valley and see if I could find some new places to hunt arrowheads.
I started on one of the creeks but there were no real gravel shoals to speak of. I got kind of tired of that after about 30 minutes and decided to head towards Skidmore Cave across the ridge. On my way to the cave I ended up running across the old Skidmore Cemetery. I have looked for that cemetery alot of times by what some of the old timers have told me, but had never found it. The last burial there was around 1889. I ended up finding it today when I wasn't even looking for it, but that's how it goes.
Acording to old records, there were around 250 burials there, which is a huge cemetery for that time period. I'm guessing there are only 30 actual legible tombstones there and 50 or so sandstone markers. Lots of graves with nothing other than a sunken in spot. I did find 3 old Confederate Veterans stones. Another thing that stood out in my mind was 7 small graves in a row with very nice high end for the time tombstones. All were the children of E.C. and Mattie Briscoe and had all died before they were a year old. They had all been born between 1874 and 1883. At the end of thier nice stones was a sandstone marked grave which I assume was the mother and another sandstone rock marking the fathers grave. The fathers grave did not have any bbirth or death dates. After wiping some of the moss and grime from the last 100 or so years off, it was just hand carved "E.C. Briscoe". The "S" in Briscoe was backwards and the name Briscoe was broken with "Bris" on top and "coe" below it.
I think alot when I'm in old cemeterys like this and I couldn't help but think that E.C. was probablly a well off man by the looks of the stones he had left for his children and like so many others during that time, kept thier money hid and after he died, it wasn't found seeing how his stone is that of a pauper.
After I came out of the woods, I rode up the mountain to grab a couple bottles of water and some extra smokes. I was checking out some huge corn fields they were turning back under and stopped to talk to one of the guys out by the road. He was an older guy and I told him I would like to walk his fields and look for arrowheads. He told me where all of his properties go to and drew me a little map of the private roads going to all of them and told me to knock myself out anytime I got ready. Pretty cool old guy. I talked to him at least an hour about the area and some of the history he knew.
I ended up in one of the back fields that runs along side Cotaco Creek. It was already 4:45 so I didn't have long to look. It took me over 2 hours to walk 7 rows. This field alone has an estimated 250 rows. This guy owns thousands upon thousands of acres. Right off the bat I found one of the most perfect bird points I've ever found. It's tine and has tons of detail. It still has both notches and it's even serated on the edges. I tried to take a couple pics of it, but it's so small that by the time I zoom it comes out looking like a fuzzy grey spot. I found alot of halves, tips and bases too.
I figure I'll be doing the same thing tomorrow and for the next few weeks every chance I get while they plow and after. It came a small rain while I was out there and the whole field glitters with flint. I've never seen such a concentrated amount of worked flint in a field. I could have honestly filled a 5 gallon bucket with nothing but worked pieces just on 1 row.
I know that there was a major route through the Cotaco Creek area dating all the way back to Paleolithic times. By other major sites found through this part of the country that have been documented by the University of Alabama, I know that migrating hunters would stay at the same camps from the end of summer til fall every year for thousands of years. I'm thinking I may have found one of the major sustained camps/villages because of all thier "garbage" left behind (worked pieces, nodules, fleeks,scrapers, etc.)
I'll be back up there tomorrow. I'll get some pictures and try to get back out by the old cemetery too since I know where it is now.
Linkback: You are not allowed to view links.
Please Register or Login
http://www.thunting.com/smf/index.php/topic,16964.msg108952.html#msg108952
|
|
Logged
|
|
