Sunday, Mar. 14, 2010
Amateur archaeologist to be awarded top honors
When Larry Kinsella was farming the land that now is Pleasant Ridge Park in Fairview Heights, he used to get the tractor and cultivator going straight on a row and then jump off and look for arrowheads in the fresh-turned ground.
"Of course, you had to get back on before you reached the fence," he said.
But still, it was a harbinger of things to come when he would become immersed in amateur archaeology.
The nationally renowned flintknapper will receive the Don Crabtree Award next month at the Society for American Archaeology's annual meeting in St. Louis, April 14-18. The award is in honor of Crabtree, who is the dean of American flintknappers and among the first to establish experimental archaeology, which figures out how ancient people might have created things.
Kinsella said it was probably the most prestigious award an amateur can get.
"It's very flattering, he said. "Someone has to nominate you, and then they ask for letters of recommendation. I hear they have them from people all over the country. I hope I can find out so I can thank them."
Kinsella, who is 65, and his wife, Marilyn, a well-known storyteller, live next to Pleasant Ridge Park in Fairview Heights on land that used to be part of his father's farm.
"I've been interested in archaeology since I was about 19 years old," he said. "I would find arrowheads on the farm and it piqued my interest."
Now he is so well-known that professionals call him to find information. He got a call from an archaeologist around Chicago who was working on a stockade.
"He wanted to know how long it would take to cut five- or six-inch trees with a stone ax," Kinsella said. "That way he could figure out the man-hours in the stockade."
Having cut about 400 trees with a stone ax he had made, Kinsella was able to tell him. He also was amazed to learn that he didn't have to sharpen the stone ax even after all that.
Kinsella said his fascination started with collecting and proceeded when he got to wondering how anyone could make such fascinating work.
"In 1973, I saw a flintknapper at Cahokia Mounds," he said. "I was sitting there watching him for eight hours each day. So a buddy and I started trying. We found we didn't know anything."
That is how the Devil's Hole Knap-In got started. The 30th edition of the event will be in early June. Flintknappers from all over the country come to Pleasant Ridge Park to learn, share what they know and trade materials.
"For the first one we sent letters to every flintknapper we could find, asking them to gather," Kinsella said. "Six or seven showed. One of the guys was a counterfeiter who hoped we knew more than he did. He left right away."
Kinsella said that once you make an arrow point, you want to make the arrow to use it. Then you want to shoot it, so you have to make a bow. Then you find out there were atlatls before there were bows, so you have to make them. You're branching out in all directions.
"You get into primitive skills. You have to make cordage so you can string your bow," he said. "That gets you into processing sinews."
Eventually you become so fanatic that you ask your surgeon to operate on you using a flintknapped black obsidian knife rather than a scalpel. The surgeon politely passed, but Kinsella noted that it had been done before.
He formerly worked as a carpenter for his uncle's company, Kinsella Construction. Even then he was volunteering during evenings and weekends.
Now that he is retired, he is able to do what he really loves. Currently, he is working on a site in Chesterfield, Mo., as a part-time archaeologist on contract.
He is partly responsible for a new generation or artisans who, he said, are doing wonderful things.
"It used to be that people made fakes so they could sell them as real. Now they are made as collectibles with more exotic materials and marked and signed," he said.
Kinsella travels the country, going all over teaching at workshops and flintknapping gatherings.
"We want to pass on what we learned," he said.
Showing posts with label amateur archaeologist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label amateur archaeologist. Show all posts
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Hunting Relics Modern Style
When I'm retired, one of the things on my "to do" list is signing up with an overseas archaeological dig as a grunt worker. Yes, these people have got it - the lure of discovering "hidden treasure" calls to us all...
Couple turns relic-hunting hobby into business
By BILL HENDRICK
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 09/17/07
looks around and quickly points to what looks like a very old brass bugle, priced at $45.
"How old is that?" the man asks. "I've got one from the Crimean War that looks just like it."
19th century, but I think it's more likely World War I, or it could be just a plain old fake."
The aging baby boomer lifts it to his lips and starts tooting, squeezing out a few wheezy bugle calls. And he's hooked, offering $30, which the Holcombes accept, knowing it could be worth a lot more — or less.
That's the way it goes in the antiques business, which Butch and Anita Holcombe went into a few years ago when he decided to quit his job as a machinist and his wife got laid off from an administrative position.
But it's not their little Greybird Relics shop in the Big Shanty Antique Market in Kennesaw that pays their bills, or the Victorian jewelry, 19th-century dominoes, ancient coins or Civil War bullets they sell on their Web site. It's the slick-covered American Digger magazine they started "on a wing and a prayer" in January 2005.
They felt publishing might produce a more predictable income than selling relics.
What's more, Butch was tired of 10-hour days, and she'd lost her job. So far, she says, "the magazine has struck a chord out there, with 1,600 subscribers around the world already."
Bigger and thicker than the average Newsweek, the magazine is filled with pictures of artifacts, such as patent medicine "miracle cure" bottles, 15th-century coins from Eastern Europe, Victorian jewelry and all sorts of relics dating from the War of 1812 to the Civil War.
It's also full of advertisements from companies that sell metal detectors and books for history buffs.
"We're not getting rich, but we're doing well," Butch says. "We've tapped into something out there."
The magazine's most popular feature is called "Just Dug," several pages of pictures of relics unearthed around the world, including stuff dug up around Marietta.
Much of it, such as a folding mirror found by Ed Travis of Cobb County, dates from the Civil War era, dug up by members of the North Georgia Relic Hunters Association or the Georgia Research & Recovery Club. Butch says most people think "the relics hobby it's just Southerners looking for Civil War stuff, but there are relic hunters all over this country, and the world, too."
Janet Levy, an anthropology professor at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, says artifact hunting as a hobby goes back at least to the days of a Babylonian king 2,500 years ago.
But the hobby is exploding now in popularity in part because technology has made it easier for buried metallic objects to be found, says Randall Miller, a history professor at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia.
"The Internet has changed the hobby," he says. "People are digging and hunting for relics not just on battlefields, but in old cisterns and privies, which can be gold mines for very old bottles."
Miller and other academics say the magazine is tapping into the same phenomenon that has made "Antiques Roadshow" such a hit on PBS. Avid relic hunters for years, the Holcombes went to Virginia in 2004 to try to find how to turn "the hobby we love into a magazine to cater to people like us."
Butch learned to use graphic design software to lay out the pages, Anita began pitching ads to metal detector companies, and they took the finished product to Star Printing in Acworth.
"It's even surprised us," Butch says. "We have subscribers in 48 states."
They send copies to U.S. warships and artifact clubs and organizations such as the Federation of Metal Detector and Archaeological Clubs, the Authentic Artifact Collectors Association and the Smithsonian Institution.
"We got a Web site up right away for the magazine so other groups could link to it," Anita says. "Payment for articles includes three comp copies and a free ad, if the author desires. Artifact hunters like to show off their finds."
Miller says most people interested in hunting for artifacts are in their 50s and 60s.
In New Mexico and Arizona, people look for pottery and Native American artifacts. Some folks walk beaches with metal detectors, looking for jewelry lost by bathers. And in the West, people hunt for gold and items from cowboy days, says Jerry Smith of Boom Town & Relic Hunters in northeastern Washington.
"We have unearthed rare saloon tokens, gold nuggets and solid gold $1 pieces worth thousands of dollars," he says.
"There are magazines out there for all sorts of things," Butch Holcombe says. "Ours concentrates on things that are newly dug up. The real interest is in seeing what's just been found because it says a lot about what's still out there. And there's an awful lot."
Couple turns relic-hunting hobby into business
By BILL HENDRICK
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 09/17/07
looks around and quickly points to what looks like a very old brass bugle, priced at $45.
"How old is that?" the man asks. "I've got one from the Crimean War that looks just like it."
19th century, but I think it's more likely World War I, or it could be just a plain old fake."
The aging baby boomer lifts it to his lips and starts tooting, squeezing out a few wheezy bugle calls. And he's hooked, offering $30, which the Holcombes accept, knowing it could be worth a lot more — or less.
That's the way it goes in the antiques business, which Butch and Anita Holcombe went into a few years ago when he decided to quit his job as a machinist and his wife got laid off from an administrative position.
But it's not their little Greybird Relics shop in the Big Shanty Antique Market in Kennesaw that pays their bills, or the Victorian jewelry, 19th-century dominoes, ancient coins or Civil War bullets they sell on their Web site. It's the slick-covered American Digger magazine they started "on a wing and a prayer" in January 2005.
They felt publishing might produce a more predictable income than selling relics.
What's more, Butch was tired of 10-hour days, and she'd lost her job. So far, she says, "the magazine has struck a chord out there, with 1,600 subscribers around the world already."
Bigger and thicker than the average Newsweek, the magazine is filled with pictures of artifacts, such as patent medicine "miracle cure" bottles, 15th-century coins from Eastern Europe, Victorian jewelry and all sorts of relics dating from the War of 1812 to the Civil War.
It's also full of advertisements from companies that sell metal detectors and books for history buffs.
"We're not getting rich, but we're doing well," Butch says. "We've tapped into something out there."
The magazine's most popular feature is called "Just Dug," several pages of pictures of relics unearthed around the world, including stuff dug up around Marietta.
Much of it, such as a folding mirror found by Ed Travis of Cobb County, dates from the Civil War era, dug up by members of the North Georgia Relic Hunters Association or the Georgia Research & Recovery Club. Butch says most people think "the relics hobby it's just Southerners looking for Civil War stuff, but there are relic hunters all over this country, and the world, too."
Janet Levy, an anthropology professor at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, says artifact hunting as a hobby goes back at least to the days of a Babylonian king 2,500 years ago.
But the hobby is exploding now in popularity in part because technology has made it easier for buried metallic objects to be found, says Randall Miller, a history professor at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia.
"The Internet has changed the hobby," he says. "People are digging and hunting for relics not just on battlefields, but in old cisterns and privies, which can be gold mines for very old bottles."
Miller and other academics say the magazine is tapping into the same phenomenon that has made "Antiques Roadshow" such a hit on PBS. Avid relic hunters for years, the Holcombes went to Virginia in 2004 to try to find how to turn "the hobby we love into a magazine to cater to people like us."
Butch learned to use graphic design software to lay out the pages, Anita began pitching ads to metal detector companies, and they took the finished product to Star Printing in Acworth.
"It's even surprised us," Butch says. "We have subscribers in 48 states."
They send copies to U.S. warships and artifact clubs and organizations such as the Federation of Metal Detector and Archaeological Clubs, the Authentic Artifact Collectors Association and the Smithsonian Institution.
"We got a Web site up right away for the magazine so other groups could link to it," Anita says. "Payment for articles includes three comp copies and a free ad, if the author desires. Artifact hunters like to show off their finds."
Miller says most people interested in hunting for artifacts are in their 50s and 60s.
In New Mexico and Arizona, people look for pottery and Native American artifacts. Some folks walk beaches with metal detectors, looking for jewelry lost by bathers. And in the West, people hunt for gold and items from cowboy days, says Jerry Smith of Boom Town & Relic Hunters in northeastern Washington.
"We have unearthed rare saloon tokens, gold nuggets and solid gold $1 pieces worth thousands of dollars," he says.
"There are magazines out there for all sorts of things," Butch Holcombe says. "Ours concentrates on things that are newly dug up. The real interest is in seeing what's just been found because it says a lot about what's still out there. And there's an awful lot."
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