by David Marolf, Manchester, Iowa
April 2017 Central States Archaeological Journal
After a heavy rain my pal Hank and I went to walk a long stream in Louisa County, Iowa. This stream is a daylong hike for one guy, so I dropped him off at the bridge to hike up one and I hiked down a fence row into the middle to look at the upper end of the same stream while he was coming up. Later we would meet back in the middle and go home.
I hadn’t found anything but toward the upper end a short side tributary came into the stream from the south. Although up to that point I’d never found much in it, I always hiked up this tributary anyway. At its very head (upper) end, this small rill splits into two nothing more than two gullies. While wiggling up the left gully first, after only a few yards I found a nice gray and white atlatl dart. I thought—Good, I found one; a successful hunt.
The right gully is a little larger and goes a little further than at the beginning you don’t have to “wiggle” as much to navigate and I’d only gone a few yards again, always looking down. At first I thought—There’s a red bar of soap laying in the water; that’s odd. When I picked it up, sure enough it was slippery like a wet bar of soap, but before I had it out of the 2 inch deep water I knew I had something much better than a bar of soap. This red hematite celt is a wonderful artifact.
The iron in the stone was oozing a red precipitate of oxidation over its entire casing due to feel slick and this precipitate came off easily and made the palm of my hand all red. I stuck it in the front right pocket of my old jacket so as not to ding up the nice perfect point in my front left pocket and headed back down stream to meet up with Hank. When we got back together like always the—Did you find anything?—question was asked. I said, “Yeah, found a bar of soap” and handed it to him. It was still oozing red and the inside of my jacket pocket was totally red—we were both amazed. It has long ago quit oozing and turned into a beautiful, highly polished, award-winning red hematite celt.