Indian Artifact Auction
We are honored to be selling unreserved at public auction the extensive and important Indian artifact study collection gathered by Charles W. Merry, Sr. (1913 - 2002) of Rockville, Maryland.
Mr. Merry was an amateur archaeologist of the highest order, meticulously recording his finds and sharing them with professionals. His comprehensive assemblage of pre-historic material formed the basis for Jack Hranicky's massive "Lithic Technology in the Middle Potomac River Valley of Maryland and Virginia." The Merry Collection was also used to illustrate Hranicky and Painter's "A Guide to the Identification of Virginia Projectile Points." Many of the pieces offered in this sale are thus enhanced by the ironclad provenance of having been published.
Mr. Merry's efforts resulted in a highly focused regional collection spanning some 12,000 years of Native American history along the Potomac. He spent the leisure hours of a lifetime recovering artifacts from plowed fields and riverbanks that have long since been lost to urban sprawl emanating from nearby Washington, D. C. Nothing like the Merry Collection will ever again be formed in the vicinity of our nation's capital.
Although some of the collection's finer pieces are to be sold individually, most of the material will be offered in Mr. Merry's original homemade trays as organized by him.