Jordan Emmett, 8, was walking past a street construction project near his Safety Harbor home when he saw something red sticking out of the dirt. It was this roughly 5,000-year-old spear point.
A gift from 5,000 years ago
By Eileen Schulte,
St. Petersburg Times
Staff Writer
August 12, 2009
SAFETY HARBOR — A striking find by an 8-year-old boy proves this city was an active hunting ground after the last ice age.
When a public works crew was replacing a storm sewer line on Joyce Street and First Avenue N last month, Jordan Emmett, a budding archaeologist, went to have a look.
"I saw a red thing sticking up and I brought it home,'' he said.
At first, his grandfather, Mike Emmett, said he thought it was a piece of plastic.
But the red thing turned out to be a roughly 5,000-year-old spear point made by the seminomadic middle archaic people before the Egyptians began building pyramids. The well-preserved tool was formed out of reddish agatized coral that turned into flint 450 million years ago. It's a little over 2 inches long and weighs about 0.6 ounces.
"It's known as part of the Newnan cluster of projectile points,'' said James Dwyer, curator of archaeology for the Safety Harbor Museum of Regional History.
Jordan's discovery comes almost exactly one year after a city worker found a spear point between 6,000 and 8,000 years old at the Marshall Street Park across from Joyce Street where he lives.
Dwyer said Jordan's spear point was used to hunt small game, such as rabbits, deer and raccoons.
"It's still sharp,'' Jordan said, tracing the side of the weapon with his finger.
If you'd like to have a look, both objects are on display at the museum. If you ask, officials will let you hold it up to the light, and when you do, it's possible to see tiny fossils inside.
"Jordan put it on permanent loan for us,'' said Bobbie Davidson, the museum's director of operations.
Eileen Schulte can be reached at
schulte@sptimes.com or (727) 445-4153.