D. Long, slender point; shoulders wide or slightly barbed; stem straight, tapering, or expanding; edges straight or concave. Some would make good piercers for soft material, but very few could be used as drills. A majority would be good arrowheads. Some have the edges smooth, but if this was caused by drilling it must have been done in enlarging holes already made, since the implements so marked are very thin. The faces of the blades show no polish or smoothness, such as might result from use as knives. The specimen illustrated ([figure 254]) is from Madison county, Alabama; others from northeastern Alabama and Coosa valley; Scioto valley, Ohio; eastern Tennessee; western and central North Carolina; southwestern Arkansas; Kanawha valley; and Savannah, Georgia.
Fig. 255.—Perforator, stemmed, with cutting point.
E. Stem may be of any form; wide shoulders; never barbed; point or piercer narrow, well worked, with edges parallel its entire length, and terminating in a cutting edge instead of a point. This form (shown in [figure 255]) is found only in the collection from Savannah, Georgia.
Blunt Arrowheads, or “Bunts.”
Certain arrowheads have the end opposite the base rounded or flattened instead of pointed. Commonly, both faces are worked off equally, to bring the edge opposite the middle line of the blade, though sometimes it may be a little to one side. The stem and base are of any form found in the common patterns of arrowheads. Few are barbed, though many have shoulders. For the most part, they are probably made from the ordinary spearpoints or arrowheads and knives that have had the points broken off, though some seem to have been intentionally made this way originally. A few are smooth or polished at the ends, as though used as knives or scrapers; but most of them have no marks except such as would result from being struck or shot against some hard substance; even this being absent in many of them, as in the specimen represented in the accompanying figure.
Jones says that crescent-shaped arrows were used by southern Indians for shooting off birds’ heads,[184] and it is known that chisel-shape arrows were much used during the Middle Ages.[185]
Fig. 256.—Blunt arrowhead, or “bunt”.
This type of aboriginal implement or weapon is shown in [figure 256], representing a specimen from Savannah, Georgia. Other examples come from eastern Tennessee; Kanawha valley; western North Carolina; southern and southwestern Wisconsin; southwestern Illinois; Scioto valley, Ohio; and Savannah, Georgia.