Friday, December 16, 2022

Quartz tools in glacial sands - what do they mean?

[Not rock pile related] 

I was driving around the "Head of the Bay" in Bourne, at the top of Buzzard's Bay. It occurred to me that where they dug the Cape Cod Canal, from the north to the south side of the cape, there was a natural series of lakes and waterways that did some of the job. 

This route followed by today's canal was probably a travel corridor in pre-history. In fact, as I was driving around on Bournedale Rd there was a sign saying it was an "Ancient Way" and that I should drive carefully. [Not sure if reckless driving is a threat to the archaeological record or to the mood.] 

Since they found lots of arrowheads at the southern end of this corridor, near the Aptucxet Trading Post in Bourne, I figured a good place to hunt plowed fields would be up at the Head of the Bay. Well, there were a few places visible from the aerial photos but they were either all grown over, or fenced in as part of very private farms. But as I drove back and forth checking several different places, I passed a cranberry bog several times (the one with three conspicuous windmills, that you see from Rt 495) and, eventually, thought I could spend some time looking around the edges of the bog - where they had been bulldozing not too long ago. I mean, if an ancient site is going to show up anywhere near here, it is most likely to show up in a cross section that really goes down into the glacial sands.  

After looking around the edges of the bog, I was wandering around random piles of dirt and saw this:

Just what I was hoping for! I pulled it out but it turned out to be a broken piece of something larger. I thought this was part of an axe. In the picture, the tip is pointing down and the break is facing up:
Here it is from in back, with the tip facing up:
It is a nice piece of quartz and it would have been a nice stone tool. What they call a "heartbreaker" on YouTube.

But wait! Maybe the break is in the lower left of the previous picture and the lower right of this picture:

That is a bit more like an arrowhead.

So maybe, if you are willing to spend an hour walking around newly bulldozed sand in a cranberry bog, you might find - at least - a broken quartz stone tool. It could be any age. But just because the sand is being mixed up by the bulldozer doesn't mean the find is not more or less in situ. Meaning it really is what it is: a stone tool in the glacial sand. 

Did it start out on the surface or was it some depth in the sand? Well, I am not an expert but there are a couple clues. One: no weathering. Two: bits of orange (iron?) stain that have migrated into the superficial cracks on the surface of the quartz. 

The long and the short of it is that this is not a completely crazy arrowhead hunting strategy. I have been eyeing some new bulldozing going on at the cranberry bogs along the Coonemessett River in Falmouth. Arrowheads are cool (and certainly what I am hoping to find) but a little bird is telling me that there could be a deeper story.

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