Highlands Today
'Artifact Night' Unveils History
Jasmina Meyer/Highlands Today
Joe and Rose Besch look at a local map and artifacts at the Museum of Florida Art and Culture on Thursday in Avon Park.
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Published: March 24, 2008
AVON PARK — More than 15 years ago, John Craft came across a rock near Fort Ogden, south of Arcadia. He figured the lump was something different since it looked like a perfectly shaped spear head.
He didn't need anyone to confirm that, but Anne Reynolds took a look at it Thursday evening at South Florida Community College and told him what he knew.
More than 30 people showed up for "Artifact Night," and some brought with them bowls of rocks and bones, hoping to know more about their identity and significance.
The Kissimmee Valley Archaeological and Historical Conservancy identified several rocks brought in by visitors as worn out remnants of ancient Native-American artifacts. Some of them looked barely out of the ordinary to the untrained eye.
Reynolds and Phelps, a long-time collector of these artifacts from Ohio down to Florida, matched the rocks to illustrations in a manual to determine where they were found and how old the knife points were.
Reynolds matched a knife point found by Avon Park resident Larry Hooper.
"It's a 'paleo,'" she told Hooper. In other words, she believed it dated from what they called the "Paleo-Archaic" period of Florida's pre-history, between 7,000 and 9,000 B.C. The last ice age ended just a thousand years earlier than that time-span.
Phelps pointed out that the bases of ancient stone knife blades from that era were straight and easy to heft onto a handle. Before Europeans introduced metal knives, the Native-American tribes began creating notches and wings in the base of knife blades.
"Why they kept changing the bases of the points over the years, I don't know," he said.
The thing about these points, however, is that they are usually so worn down when they're found that they look like arrow heads.
Phelps himself had a table full of knife points he found in Highlands County over the course of 10 years.
Finding History
John Craft, 67, said he had been finding artifacts since he was 10. He found some of his best knife points near Lake Easy south of Lake Wales and outside of Frostproof as well as Fort Ogden.
He and Phelps said they find most of them on lake beds.
"Take a yard rake... it will make a distinct sound when it hits stone," Craft said.
Dale Knapp, an officer with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, brought a large silver bowl full of odd points, as well. He said he found them while at a ranch in northern Florida.
Phelps and Reynolds saw more than just knife points that evening. Phelps showed a well-rounded, cylindrical rock with a hole through the long end of it.
"Now this, my dog found this," Phelps said. He then compared the rock to a portrait of a tribesman wearing a necklace. The rock he was holding looked like one of the beads on that necklace.
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