February 7, 2024

Folsom Point Arrowhead

https://photos.app.goo.gl/vS8GJEpfHQabJ6En6

This Folsom Point Arrowhead was picked up by my Grandfather sometime in the 1950s. My grandfather, Big Jim, was a traveling salesman for asbestos gaskets used in the oil fields of the western US.

During his travels through Wyoming he found this arrowhead in a bar along his route. The bartender would keep a basket on the bar for the local cowboys that stopped to wet their whistle. The deal was you could get a free beer for an arrowhead you brought in.

Customers were then allowed to browse through the basket and pay a few bucks for an arrowhead.

Folsom Point arrowheads are generally radiocarbon dated to be from a period ranging from 11,000 BCE to 10,000 BCE. Folsom is one of the Paleoindian cultures which emerged from the preceding Clovis culture. Folsom points are most commonly found in the Great Plains and surrounding areas.  Folsom people continued the big-game hunting tradition established by Clovis people, but Folsom hunters shifted their emphasis towards bison and abandoned mammoth hunting.