Thursday, August 23, 2007

Stone Tools from Georgia

By geophileHere are some of the pictures sent in by coferrels of Georgia. Many of the items are quartz.


Hand holding a scraper.




5 comments :

pwax said...

Coeferrells wrote:
It is very hard to determine much of anything from some of the pictures. There is no substitute for putting them in your hand and seeing the work that goes into them. The quartz / ite tools were not as refined and detailed. But I have had some people look at them and an Indian and several that I was not sure about she picked right up and said "It's a scraper." You can post them. Maybe someone else will post some things they have. Fort Benning had a little article on line I stumbled across saying that most peopel walk right past the Archaic tools/points because the detail is not as fine and they tend to look like rocks...until you pick them up and take a closer look.

Pic "Misc axe hand tools" has several examples of axes / hoes, and on the far right is a large tool that I believe may be a hand axe as it fits in your hand.Pic "Close up" shows a tool(?) that looks like a birds head. I have a scraper made from the same smoky quartz, but it does not have the shiny mica in it. Not sure what it is/was, but if you have it in your hand and look at it, someone spent a lot of time chipping away at it.

Pic "Scrapers" has an assortment of scrapers, but all fit perfectly in a small (female) hand. The bottom two are made exactly the same and at first we thought it was a broken preform but it is a scraper/knife

Pic Quartzite scraper shows a round scraper and pic Quartzite scraper in hand shows how it's held (we find a lot of the round ones.
Pic "Misc chips and pieces" are mostle where a point was broken, or started, etc.
Pic "Scrapers tools celt" have some pieces I have no idea what they are. For example, at the bottom of the pic in the middle is a rock with two hooks on the end. I found it at the base of a tree in the pasture. I found another in the woods 600 meters away on a hill I thought it was something you would haft to a stick BUT it fits in a MANS hand like a glove. The flat part goes in the butt of your hand and fingers come over the top and there are even slight indentations where all fingers go. Top left corner is a quartz point/knife that looks very similar to the one you posted. The Broken (ARGHHHHHH!) celt was found on some other property we have in Alabama. Can not find the other half...I think it was broken a long time ago. But it is neat in that you can see the mark on the rock where it fit into a socket of wood. Just thought I would throw it in there.

Geophile said...

I didn't post all of the pictures, so some things he mentions aren't shown.

Anonymous said...

coferrells@belsouth.net: How can we start a Southeast chapter of rockpiles? I really think there is some potential here. I have run across a few folks that might be willing tyo popst some pics, but we have NOTHING down here like what you have, yet we have a lot of "piles." Let me know what you think...

Anonymous said...

I dont how long ago this was posted. I just happened to see it. I have the same type of tools made from quartz. I am not sure on the period that they came from and I was doing research on them when I saw yours. Very interesting to see. Mine were found in NW Georgia. I havent found any points to go along with them so it is hard to say which Period they are from. When you find out please post it. Thanks

Anonymous said...

So I see there is still no response that I left months ago. I have been back to that spot where I found mine this yr but still havent found any points. I do have some nice tools from there though and wish I could post them.