Found some old pictures of my early finds

[joshuaream]

My mom decided to sell her lake house and I came up to help her pack. For as much as we moved around this place was always there and kind of became a storage depot. I found some pictures and relics that my father had kept from when we lived in South America (I was in Highschool and he was an engineer for Ford.)

We enjoyed collecting in our home state of Indiana and we followed our hobby down there.

These all from a couple of weekends of digging at a midden on the beach.

This first piece was strung up more or less as found (the beads were in this order.) It's got a pretty cool raised center, but no engraving.


This big bat wing gorget is missing a bit of the left wing tip, it was erroding out and the light colored spots were exposed. There were three othe bat wings below this one in the same cache, but I didn't find any pictures of them. (Pre digital days.)



A nice little round gorget.



This was the total haul in shell from that site. Lots and lots of beads which is very typical for these sites. The other pieces in the cache are at the bottom. That green jar was a spanish olive jar that we found on a historic site in the same area.



We'd often see some pretty cool road kill along the highway early in the morning, and if they were fresh we'd pick them up and skin them. It's a little weird, but checking out fresh road kill is an interesting way to see animals you normally don't see (snakes, cats, gators, ant eaters, etc.)

[Cannonman17]

Well I don't know abut the road kill my friend, I skinned a skunk like that once with the idea of making a hat but my buddy and I were under the influence of alcohol at the time. Didn't stink for some reason.. anyhow, those shell pieces are really outstanding! That necklace is incredible! Thanks for posting!

[Gibby]

Very cool. Those are some cool shells and cool hides.

[joshuaream]

Thanks guys. Here's a better shot of one of the smaller gorgets from a different site.




The road kill are a ocelots, they are pretty common in the desert region of the country. One of our friends down there found a couple of cubs (kittens) along side the road where the mother had been hit and managed to capture and raise them. As they got bigger they started hunting rabbits and birds and he stopped feeding them altogether, they still hang around his farm but are now semi-wild. You can't pet them anymore but I've got some great pictures of them looking wild.

Here is a pair of macaws. You see them at a lot of roadside bus stops and junk yards where they flock to lick the antifreeze/coolant since it's sweet. After awhile they get grungy looking from the oil and can't fly. They are as mean as pit bull and can break a finger if they bite you, but there are several places that take them in and wean them off the glycol and get them eating fruit again.

[Massac]

Nice Joshua.
Did you guys ever find any good stuff in Indiana?

[joshuaream]

Originally Posted by Massac

Nice Joshua.
Did you guys ever find any good stuff in Indiana?

Not quite like this stuff, but I think we did ok I'll post some of my Indiana finds sometime over Christmas break.

Back in the 80's we used to make a couple of trips per summer to dig some of the Caborne-Welborn sites along the Wabash River, we found some neat bone arrowheads, mississippian pottery, etc. In Indiana/Illinois at least those sites are pretty much gone (more from the errosion than digging but I guess the digging didn't help.) We also hunted the Huntington and Salamonie resevoirs as well as a lot of fields in Whitley, Allen & Kosiusko Counties.

[Steve Valentine]

Very nice looking pieces Joshua. After seeing these pictures and some that you have posted before the amount of Shell pieces you have is just astounding.

[manoman]

Thanks for posting such unusual artifacts. I like seeing stuff that is unlikely to show up again. My wife loves macaws and is pretty upset about that pair of birds. Radiator fluid has killed a lot of wildlife over the years.