GUEST: I brought a spearhead.

I found it on my folks's property out of Mandan, North Dakota, in about 1947.

APPRAISER: How old were you when you found it?

GUEST: Oh, you'd ask that.

APPRAISER: (laughing) GUEST: (chuckles) Oh, I must have been about... Good God.

(chuckles) APPRAISER: (laughs) GUEST: Uh, I think I was seven or eight.

APRAISER: Do you have any idea who made it, time period?

GUEST: No-- no.

No.

APPRAISER: No guesses?

GUEST: No gue...(chuckles) Well, I know it's flint.

APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.

GUEST: Or I think it's flint.

APPRAISER: Okay.

GUEST: And I don't know which tribe it was made it.

APPRAISER: So, this predates tribal affiliations of any kind.

So, we're going to go pre-contact period here.

GUEST: Oh, okay.

APPRAISER: So, we're going to go to about 8000 BC.

GUEST: What?

APPRAISER: (laughs) So, we're going to date this to the Archaic to Woodland period.

8000 BC at the earliest to about 1200 A.D.

At this point in the pre-contact time, archaeologists are grouping Indigenous people by technology.

So, the Archaic period, we're just coming out of the Ice Age.

The continent's warming.

The game that they're hunting is smaller, so they're readjusting to that kind of life.

And then, when you get into the Woodland period, you get the introduction of pottery and the introduction of agriculture.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: So when we're dating points of any kind, we're looking at the form, we're looking at how this is made, the shape, the shape of the base.

But because this doesn't fall into a specific type, we're giving it a broader range.

So, the other really fun thing about this is, it's a very specific flint to North Dakota.

It's called Knife River flint.

It's only found in a small area along the Knife River in Western North Dakota.

GUEST: I didn't know there was a Knife River.

APPRAISER: (laughs) And the really cool thing about this......if you haven't done this, shown it to the light, it's translucent.

GUEST: Really?

APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.

So, Knife River flint is very highly collectible because of the translucency, and it was highly prized by Indigenous cultures.

Do you have any idea on the value?

GUEST: (laughing) No, I haven't even come close.

If I can't come close on... APPRAISER: (laughs) GUEST: ...time-wise... I have no idea.

APPRAISER: So, conservatively, if this were to come up to auction, I would expect it to bring in the $2,000 to $4,000 range.

GUEST: Hm.

Hm, that's pretty good.

That's pretty good--thank you.