WORTH MORE THAN GOLD ALIBATES FLINT

More valuable than gold. Prehistoric prospectors would have discarded gold nuggets as worth little but the raw material for their tools and weapons was highly valued. But the most desirable flint of all was from this one site we visited yesterday.

On the shores of the Canadian river, North of Amarillo, on a mesa there is cap rock containing deposits of flint. Small pits and literally tons of stone manufacturing debris result from 13,000 years of quarrying a brilliantly colored stone known as Alibates flint.

So prized was the material that prehistoric hunters traveled—or traded—over distances of a thousand miles or more to obtain it.

Spear points like this
one made of Alibates stone have been found in sites as far north as Montana, as far south as Central Mexico, and east to at least the Mississippi River.





Flint miners left holes ranging from small depressions to broad pits ranging from 5 to 20 feet across and up to 2 feet deep.

Everywhere there are the quarry wastepiles and tool-making debris covering the mesa. Thousands of quarried chunks, tested cobbles, flakes, and tools in various stages of production.



This piece was discarded because of the fault through the stone.



Most 'flint' is dull and grey. Alibates flint has hues and tones of the evening sky, colors range from pale gray and white, to pink, maroon, and vivid red, to orange-gold and an intense purplish blue.



Patterns in the stone are varied as well. Bands of alternating color create stripes and a marbled effect.

It was the exotic appearance of Alibates flint rather than its workability that attracted prehistoric toolmakers. Modern-day knappers report that the material has a resistant quality and hardness which makes it more difficult to flake and shape into tools than other stone, such as the Edwards cherts found abundantly in the Edwards Plateau to the south.

Martin Schmitz the ranger guide
explains that later visitors to the quarry mined the quarry stone more intensively than the first finders 12000 years ago. They used Alibates flint to outfit all parts of their "daily toolkit of weapons and cooking implements" as well as blanks to trade for other materials from far afield. In return they received painted pottery, shell and turquoise jewelry, pipes, and obsidian from groups in the southwest and to the north, many hundreds of miles away.

Martin speculated about the widespread occurrence of red Alibates flint in sites and how often the raw material would be worked into a weapon with a bright red flint tip, and whether the color might have invoked magical connections to the blood of animals.


It was a cold and grey day but the ranger guide made the bleak hillside come alive for us, recreating the scenes from the past as stone age man, or woman, cut into the rock for their treasured raw material. It was a pleasant change from some of the inexperienced seasonal interpreters we have come across at other parks who knew little about the background of their subjects.