Extraordinary Artifacts
Artifact #111
This Clovis biface—or two-faced point with a continuous
edge—is made of Green River Formation chert. Though precisely
when the Fenn artifacts were made is unknown, experts used a process
known as hydration analysis to get a rough idea of when two obsidian
points in the cache were created. When a newly broken piece of
obsidian is buried in soil it begins to absorb water, forming a
"hydration rind." Experts can use the thickness of this rind to
roughly determine age, which in the case of the two obsidian points
tested was thousands of years old.