Green County man loves mysteries behind ancient arrowheads, stone tools
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Green County resident Jerry Stabler holds the arrowhead that got him started collecting. It was actually found in the 1940s by his sister. The 2,000-year-old arrowhead is made of obsidian, a stone not native to Wisconsin. ‘The question is how did this rock get in my grandpa’s Spring Grove farm thousands of miles away?’ he asked.
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Stabler has been collecting arrowheads and stone tools for decades. Most of his collection comes from the area around his home.
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A group of items from the collection of Jerry Stabler includes, clockwise from lower left, a spear point estimated at 10,000 years old, a knife or scrapper, 4-5k old, a small stone awl, 2 k old, a stone axe 2-3 k old, and a tiny "bird-point" arrowhead age unknown.
GREEN COUNTY — As a boy, Jerry Stabler picked up stones in the fields of his family farm in Spring Grove, south of Brodhead.
As a young man, he collected fossils.
By the time he was 40, he "really got into arrowheads," Stabler said.
The appeal is their history, said Stabler, a former auto mechanic who retired as a service manager for a dealership.
"You walk along the field, pick up an artifact and realize the last person who picked it up was 5,000 to 6,000 years ago," the 76-year-old said.
That's when Stabler's curiosity is piqued even more.
"Who was this guy who made it? Was he tall? Was he skinny? Did he have a family to provide for?"
While he enjoys the hunt for arrowheads—tips of spears, knives or scrapers made from flint or stone—Stabler is more attracted to the intrigue.
"I'm more of a history buff and into genealogy than a collector. It's a hobby," he said.
"I want to know what it is and how it was made. It's not easy to make arrowheads or spear points," he said.
"When these were made, they were sharp as a razor," Stabler said, running the tip of his index finger along the jagged edge of an arrowhead.
"But after laying in the ground for years, the frost chips away at 'em," he said.
When Stabler found his last arrowhead on his late grandfather's 100-acre farm in spring 2011, he literally jumped for joy.
He figures the 4.5-inch-by-2.5-inch chert—the impure part of a flint—was used to hunt animals to provide meat for a family, as well as for protection.
Stabler used to walk for hours in search of arrowheads but doesn't do it as much anymore.
"They're getting harder to find," he said.
Many of his favorite spots are now fields worked by area crop farmers, who plow with large equipment that more easily breaks arrowheads into pieces.
Stabler said the arrowheads in his 150-piece collection are all different styles that represent different periods and different cultures. He considers them art.
"Some date from the time the Pilgrims came here to 2,000 years before the time of Christ. Most of the others are much older," he said.
Stabler said an unusual beaver tail point arrowhead found by his sister in the 1940s got him started collecting.
The piece still intrigues him today because in North America, the black, shiny volcanic glass comes only from Mexico, New Mexico, Texas or Washington, where a volcanic fault line runs.
"The question is how did this rock get in my grandpa's Spring Grove farm thousands of miles away?" he asked.
Stabler's favorite arrowhead is a 6.5-inch spear point with a broken tip. He estimates it is between 10,000 and 11,000 years old.
"The patina comes from laying in the ground in an area that was never farmed," he said of the tarnish.
"A friend of mine found it hoeing his garden."
Sep 21, 2012 at 3:49 p.m.
Suggest removal
I would disagree that removing them loses the importance, they should be displayed and revered, not left in the ground to deteriorate (albeit very very slow) or have a set of condos erected on top of them.
Sep 21, 2012 at 6:39 a.m.
Suggest removal
Interesting point WESTORBUST - I can still remember the arrowheads we use to find when we were growing up near the creek by our home. I still have them and often wonder about the history behind each.
Sep 21, 2012 at 12:26 a.m.
Suggest removal
Yes and no Westorbust. It really comes down to the condition of the field the artifacts were found in. If the artifacts were found in farm fields that have been extensively tilled, the information is probably already lost. However if some of the subsoil is left intact, then yes we could have learned a lot more about the artifacts and their associations.
That being said, I do believe if so many artifacts were found in a relative small area, a trained archaeologist should have been contacted to see if information could be salvaged. As a trained archaeologist myself it pains me to think of all the lost history here.
As for the obsidian (the black volcanic glass), Westorbust already kind of mentioned the reason why. It is actually quite common to find material that is not indigenous to the area. At the major settlement remains of Cahokia just outside St. Louis, archaeologists have found conch shells and parrot feathers that would have only been found in Central America. Ancient Native American's had quite the extensive trade network.
Sep 20, 2012 at 4:14 p.m.
Suggest removal
The problem with this, is that even though collecting them is cool, once you remove them from the ground you lose most of the importance because you are removing them from any understanding of why they are there and it's cultural and historical significance.
As to why an arrowhead would show up made of material from thousands of miles away, you know our ancestors weren't idiots and they traded and traveled extensively.
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