Collecting
What kind of arrowhead did I find?
Archaeologists do not call them arrowheads — most are projectile points from spears and darts, and true arrow points only appear in the last 1,500 years or so. Type is decided by the base and the notching, not by the tip, because the base is where the point was hafted and that is what changed through time.
Where you found it decides whether you may keep it. On US federal and tribal land, collecting artefacts is a felony under the Archaeological Resources Protection Act, and human remains and funerary objects are protected under NAGPRA. On private land in most states it is legal with the owner's permission. Digging is different from surface collection almost everywhere. And an artefact removed without its location loses nearly all its scientific value — photograph it in place and record where it came from before you pick it up.
Narrow it down
Showing all 28 point types
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Clovis
A lance-shaped point with a concave base and a broad flute — a channel flake scar — running up one or both faces from the base, usually a third of the length. Edges near the base are ground smooth so they would not cut the binding.
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Folsom
Smaller and finer than Clovis, with a flute running almost the entire length of both faces and leaving only a narrow margin. Among the most technically demanding stone tools ever made.
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Dalton
A lance shape with a deeply concave, heavily ground base and flaring ears. Very often resharpened repeatedly into a serrated, asymmetric blade — it was a knife as much as a point.
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Agate Basin
A long, narrow, unnotched leaf shape with the widest point above the middle, finely flaked in parallel bands, with heavy grinding on the lower edges.
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Kirk corner-notched
Broad corner notches producing sharp barbs and a wide straight base, with strongly serrated edges. One of the most abundant Early Archaic types in the East.
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Bifurcate base — LeCroy, St Albans, Kanawha
Small points with the base split into two distinct lobes by a central notch, giving a forked or fishtail outline. Distinctive enough to date a site on sight.
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Big Sandy and other side-notched
Narrow notches cut into the sides just above a straight or slightly concave ground base, leaving square rather than barbed shoulders.
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Stemmed Archaic — Stanly, Morrow Mountain, Guilford
A triangular blade over a short contracting or straight stem with sloping shoulders. Morrow Mountain stems taper to a point; Stanly stems are square with a small notch.
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Benton and Savannah River
Large, broad, heavy points with a square stem and wide shoulders, often made on high-quality chert. Savannah River points are among the biggest routinely found in the East.
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Adena
A long narrow blade over a broad rounded or contracting stem, thick in cross-section and often beautifully made in Flint Ridge or Wyandotte chert.
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Snyders
A wide, thin, expanding-stem point with very large round corner notches and a broad blade. A Hopewell type, often made in exotic imported chert and found in mounds.
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Hopewell and Copena
Finely made, thin and symmetrical, in materials traded across half a continent — obsidian from Yellowstone and Knife River flint from North Dakota turn up in Ohio mounds.
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Jack's Reef corner-notched
Thin, wide and very finely made with pronounced corner notches. Marks the transition to the bow in the East, and its thinness and light weight are why.
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Levanna
A broad isosceles triangle with a straight or concave base, as wide at the base as it is long, with no notching at all.
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Madison
A small thin triangle, longer than it is wide, with straight edges and a straight base. The standard Mississippian arrow point, and among the most commonly found points in the East.
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Cahokia
A small triangle with delicate side notches and sometimes a third notch in the base, made on very thin flakes. Associated with the Cahokia mound centre.
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Desert side-notched
A very small thin triangle with narrow side notches high on the blade and often a notch in the base. Frequently found alongside historic trade goods.
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Cottonwood triangular
A small unnotched triangle with a straight or slightly convex base, very thin, often on obsidian. The unnotched counterpart of the Desert side-notched.
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Elko corner-notched
A broad triangular blade with deep corner notches and pronounced barbs, usually on obsidian or basalt. One of the standard Great Basin dart points.
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Rose Springs and Eastgate
Small, thin and delicately notched, with an expanding stem. Their appearance in the record dates the arrival of the bow in the Great Basin.
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Plainview and Scottsbluff
Unfluted lanceolate or square-stemmed points with fine parallel horizontal flaking across the face — a distinctive technique associated with the Cody complex bison hunters.
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Pedernales
A broad blade over a wide rectangular stem with a deeply notched, forked base. Abundant across the Texas Hill Country and immediately recognisable.
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Bonham and Perdiz
Small arrow points with sharp barbs and a narrow contracting stem drawn to a point — the Perdiz stem looks like a tiny spike.
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Harahey and beveled knives
A long four-beveled diamond-shaped blade, sharpened alternately on opposite edges of each face so it stayed straight as it was resharpened. A butchering knife rather than a point.
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Gunflint and historic worked glass
A square or wedge-shaped flint blank from a European musket, or a point knapped from bottle glass or a ceramic insulator. Both mark the contact and post-contact period.
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Preform or blank
A roughly shaped biface with thick edges, no notches and no fine retouch — an unfinished point abandoned or stockpiled. Very common at quarry and workshop sites and frequently mistaken for a crude finished tool.
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Scraper
A thick flake steeply retouched along one end or edge into a blunt working face, usually with a flat unmodified underside. Used on hides. Far more common on most sites than points are.
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Modern reproduction
Sharp unpatinated edges, no soil sheen, often in a stone not local to the area, and flake scars that are unusually regular — modern knappers use copper tools, which leave a different signature from antler and stone.
Nothing in this key matches every filter at once. That usually means one observation is off — a colour read in shade, or a size guessed rather than measured. Clear the filter you are least sure about and look again.
The base is the type; the tip is not
Point typology looks arbitrary until you understand what it is measuring. Tips break constantly and blades are resharpened until they change shape completely — a Dalton point may have been reworked into something half its original length. The hafting element, the base and notches that fitted into a shaft, does not change with use, and it changed systematically through time and across regions.
That is why archaeologists can date a site from a surface find. A named type such as Clovis, Kirk or Madison is a shorthand for a period and a region, established by finding those points in dated stratified deposits.
The broad sequence in North America:
| Period | Dates | Typical points | Weapon |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paleoindian | 13,000–8,000 BC | Clovis, Folsom, Dalton, Agate Basin | Thrusting spear and early atlatl |
| Archaic | 8,000–1,000 BC | Kirk, bifurcates, Morrow Mountain, Elko, Pedernales | Atlatl dart |
| Woodland | 1,000 BC–AD 1,000 | Adena, Snyders, Jack's Reef | Atlatl, then the bow from about AD 500 |
| Mississippian and late | After AD 1,000 | Madison, Cahokia, Desert side-notched, Perdiz | Bow and arrow |
The size rule that follows is genuinely useful in the field: a point under about 3 cm and very thin is an arrow point and is late; a point over about 5 cm is a dart or spear point and is older. An arrow shaft cannot carry a heavy head, so miniaturisation is a direct signal that the bow had arrived.
The material tells you where it travelled
Points were made from whatever knapped well locally, and archaeologists source stone to specific outcrops. When a point is made of something that does not occur within hundreds of kilometres, that is trade, and it is often more interesting than the point.
- Chert and flint — the commonest material in the East and Midwest, in every colour from white to black. Named sources like Flint Ridge in Ohio, Burlington in Missouri and Knife River flint in North Dakota are recognisable on sight.
- Obsidian — volcanic glass, only from volcanic regions. Every flow has a distinct trace-element signature, so a piece can be sourced to a specific volcano. Yellowstone obsidian in Ohio Hopewell mounds documents a trade network across half a continent.
- Quartzite and quartz — coarse and hard to work, used where nothing better was available. Quartz points often look crude and are not.
- Novaculite, jasper, agate, chalcedony — high-quality regional materials, often traded.
- Bottle glass and ceramic insulators — knapped in the historic period, and a marker of the contact era rather than a curiosity.
Patina matters too. A genuinely old point picked up from the surface usually has a soft sheen and slightly dulled edges from soil chemistry and weathering; a freshly knapped reproduction has sharp bright edges and no patina. It is not conclusive on its own — points recently eroded out of a bank can look fresh — but combined with material and context it is informative.
The law, which is not the same everywhere
This is the part people most often get wrong, and the penalties are serious.
US federal land. The Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 makes it a crime to excavate, remove, damage or deface archaeological resources on federal or tribal land without a permit. It covers surface collection. First-offence felony penalties run to $20,000 and two years, more for repeat offences or commercial value. This applies to National Parks, National Forests, BLM land, Army Corps reservoirs and wildlife refuges.
Tribal land. Governed by tribal law and by NAGPRA, and collecting is prohibited.
State land. Varies by state; most prohibit collecting without a permit.
Private land. In most states, surface collection with the landowner's written permission is legal, and the artefacts belong to the landowner unless agreed otherwise. Digging is often treated differently even on private land, and several states protect burial sites regardless of ownership.
Human remains and funerary objects are protected everywhere. NAGPRA governs remains, funerary objects, sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony on federal and tribal land, and state burial laws cover private land in every state. If you encounter human remains, stop, leave everything in place, and contact law enforcement and the state archaeologist.
Selling artefacts is also regulated — interstate trafficking in illegally obtained material is a federal offence, and the market for fakes is large enough that provenance documentation matters commercially as well as ethically.
Why the location matters more than the object
A point in a drawer with no record of where it came from is an attractive stone. The same point with a location, a date and a photograph in place is data — it tells an archaeologist that a particular group was in a particular place at a particular time, and it can be combined with thousands of other records.
The distinction matters more than most collectors realise. The overwhelming majority of what archaeology knows about the peopling of the Americas comes from context: what was found with what, at what depth, in what soil. Removing an object destroys that permanently and it cannot be reconstructed.
What responsible surface collecting looks like:
- Photograph it in place with a scale, before touching it, and take a wider shot showing the setting.
- Record a GPS coordinate, the date, the field or landform, and the surface conditions.
- Do not dig. Surface collection after ploughing or erosion takes material that has already lost its context; digging destroys context that is still intact.
- Report anything unusual. Every US state has a State Archaeologist and most have avocational archaeology societies that welcome amateur records. Fluted points in particular are tracked in state and national databases, and a reported Clovis point adds to a genuine research dataset.
- Keep the record with the object. Label it, and keep the label with it if it changes hands.
Many important sites were found by farmers and amateur collectors who reported them. That is the version of this hobby that adds something.
Telling a real point from a reproduction
Modern knapping is a large and skilled hobby, and reproduction points are made in enormous numbers — most honestly, some not. Salted fields and forged provenance are both real problems in the trade.
What to look at:
- Patina and surface sheen. Genuine surface finds usually carry a soft weathered sheen and slightly softened edges. Fresh flake scars with glassy sharp edges on a point supposedly centuries old are a warning.
- Material against geography. A point in a stone with no source within several hundred kilometres is either an important trade item or a modern piece. The second is far more likely.
- Flake scar regularity. Modern knappers use copper billets and pressure flakers, which produce a distinctive, very regular scar pattern. Antler and stone leave a different signature.
- Perfection. Many genuine points show use damage, resharpening asymmetry, and impact fractures. A flawless symmetric point with no wear is a display piece.
- Provenance above all. For anything being bought, documentation of where and when it was found is the whole value. Without it, assume nothing.
28 entries here cover the major North American types and the things most often mistaken for them. Regional typologies run to well over a thousand named types, and the standard references — the Overstreet guide and the state-by-state projectile point guides published by university presses — go far deeper. A state archaeological society will identify a point for free, and will usually be more interested in where it came from than in what it is.
Questions people ask about this
How old is my arrowhead?
Size gives you a first answer. A point under about 3 cm and very thin is an arrow point, so it dates after roughly AD 500 in most of North America, because a light arrow shaft cannot carry a heavy head. A point over 5 cm is a dart or spear point and is older. Beyond that, the base shape and notching place it in a named type, and named types are tied to dated deposits.
Is it legal to collect arrowheads?
On US federal and tribal land, no — the Archaeological Resources Protection Act makes collecting, including surface collection, a felony with penalties up to $20,000 and two years for a first offence. That covers National Parks, National Forests, BLM land and Corps reservoirs. On private land in most states, surface collection with the owner's written permission is legal, and the artefacts belong to the landowner. Human remains and burial goods are protected everywhere.
Why do archaeologists call them projectile points?
Because most were never on arrows. The bow reached most of North America only in the last 1,500 years or so; before that, points tipped thrusting spears and atlatl darts. Many were also used as knives, and show resharpening consistent with cutting rather than piercing. "Projectile point" covers all of it without asserting something the object cannot support.
What is a fluted point?
A point with a channel flake removed from the base up the middle of one or both faces, thinning it for hafting. Fluting is a Paleoindian technique, so a fluted point is 10,000 to 13,000 years old and among the oldest artefacts you can find in the Americas. Clovis flutes run about a third of the length; Folsom flutes run nearly the whole face and are the more difficult of the two to produce.
How can I tell a real point from a modern reproduction?
Look for patina and a soft weathered sheen — fresh glassy flake scars on a supposedly ancient point are a warning. Check whether the stone has a source within a few hundred kilometres. Modern knappers use copper tools, which leave unusually regular flake scars. And be suspicious of perfection: genuine points usually show resharpening, use damage or an impact fracture. For anything purchased, documented provenance is the only real assurance.
What should I do if I find one?
Photograph it in place with a scale before touching it, record a GPS coordinate and the date, and take a wider shot of the setting. Do not dig — surface collection after ploughing takes material that has already lost its context, while digging destroys context that is still intact. Then report it to your State Archaeologist or a local archaeological society, especially if it is fluted; those are tracked in national databases.
I found a stone that looks worked but has no notches. What is it?
Most likely a preform — an unfinished point abandoned partway through, thick-edged with no fine retouch — or a scraper, which is a thick flake steeply retouched at one end into a blunt working face for working hides. Both are far more common on most sites than finished points, and both are genuine artefacts rather than failures.
Still not sure? Point a camera at it
A filter narrows point types down to a shortlist. Orvik reads the photo itself and names the species, with the look-alikes ranked underneath so you can check the call yourself.