Page Index Toggle Pages: 1 [2]  Send TopicPrint
Very Hot Topic (More than 25 Replies) Haw Scrapers (Read 13015 times)
lizziebird
Full Member
***
Offline


RockHoundLounger

Posts: 143
Joined: Mar 28th, 2013
Gender: Female
Re: Haw Scrapers
Reply #15 - Jan 7th, 2018 at 12:16pm
Print Post  
Joe, thanks for all of the information, and the great photos.  I think I learned something today!  Smiley

Those cabs really show off the nice translucent color variation in the chert.  Very nice. Smiley
  
Back to top
 
IP Logged
 
JoeM
God Member
*****
Offline


I Love YaBB 2.5 AE!

Posts: 4178
Location: Wake County, NC
Joined: Sep 30th, 2010
Gender: Male
Re: Haw Scrapers
Reply #16 - Jan 7th, 2018 at 3:22pm
Print Post  
Thank you, Glad to hear it, and Happy New Year to you, Lizzie. Smiley
I think I'm going to add a few more pics to this thread and then move onto another drawer.
  
Back to top
 
IP Logged
 
Rebecca
God Member
*****
Offline


I Love YaBB 2.5 AE!

Posts: 653
Joined: Nov 11th, 2010
Gender: Female
Re: Haw Scrapers
Reply #17 - Jan 15th, 2018 at 4:01pm
Print Post  
well haw...i mean huh. fascinating.
you are a wealth of information, Joe! i can't wait to see what you find in the other drawers.
i really like the cab you made of the brown material. very pretty.
  
Back to top
 
IP Logged
 
JoeM
God Member
*****
Offline


I Love YaBB 2.5 AE!

Posts: 4178
Location: Wake County, NC
Joined: Sep 30th, 2010
Gender: Male
Re: Haw Scrapers
Reply #18 - Jan 15th, 2018 at 8:29pm
Print Post  
Well Yee Haw to you too, Rebecca! Thanks and Happy New Year!
Good to hear from you. It's been too cold to hang out in the workshop and rummage thru drawers much lately, but it's gotta get done sometime. Wink

I have not yet ever made it to that Kyanite spot in Virginia. Not sure what the status is.
  
Back to top
 
IP Logged
 
JoeM
God Member
*****
Offline


I Love YaBB 2.5 AE!

Posts: 4178
Location: Wake County, NC
Joined: Sep 30th, 2010
Gender: Male
Re: Haw Scrapers
Reply #19 - Feb 4th, 2018 at 8:17pm
Print Post  
Okay, let's finish this drawer so we can move on to a new project. Wink

Going thru the drawer by far the most exciting find to me was this one little flake of "Snow Leopard Rhyolite".
The source of this unusual lithic material is in Person Co. I personally have found flakes of this material in Halifax Co, some 60 miles from the source, and know of pieces that have been found in Granville and Warren Counties. Which begins to establish a distribution of the material to the east, as would be expected.
So this flake is the first evidence I have seen of this material to the south of the source. I did not remember ever finding any on the Haw until re-finding it now.
Now you understand why I'm so excited!
If you would like to read all about the Snow Leopard Rhyolite there is a thread on page 3 of this section of the board "Lithic Material; Spherulitic Rhyolite", or try this link,http://rockhoundlounge.com/cgi-bin/yabb252/YaBB.pl?num=1316269240

First pics are side A & B of the flake.
Last pic is the flake on a slab of the Snow Leopard.
  

DSCN1049.JPG ( 170 KB | 64 Downloads )
DSCN1049.JPG
DSCN1053.JPG ( 180 KB | 84 Downloads )
DSCN1053.JPG
DSCN1059.JPG ( 187 KB | 75 Downloads )
DSCN1059.JPG
Back to top
 
IP Logged
 
JoeM
God Member
*****
Offline


I Love YaBB 2.5 AE!

Posts: 4178
Location: Wake County, NC
Joined: Sep 30th, 2010
Gender: Male
Re: Haw Scrapers
Reply #20 - Feb 4th, 2018 at 8:39pm
Print Post  
The Guilford lancelot type projectile points and all the different grades and types of "BlacK" lithic materials are two things I pay extra attention to in my collection.
A very interesting general observation and something I did not recognize until cleaning out the drawer is that the Guilford type is very poorly represented in this area of the state. Will look at other collections more closely to see if there is a trend.

This area of the Haw River has been heavily traveled for a good 12,000 years and more, so there is a good representation of all types of lithic materials used. Lots of flakes of quality material.
The Black materials can be igneous, metamorphic, or sedimentary.
Here is a sample of quality Black lithic material. The "spotted" pieces on the right are called "porphyritic" and all this material is native to North Carolina.
The two points pictured were not in the drawer, but were found in this area and I thought you might like to see them. Wink
  

DSCN1002_001.JPG ( 254 KB | 67 Downloads )
DSCN1002_001.JPG
DSCN1078.JPG ( 172 KB | 63 Downloads )
DSCN1078.JPG
Back to top
 
IP Logged
 
JoeM
God Member
*****
Offline


I Love YaBB 2.5 AE!

Posts: 4178
Location: Wake County, NC
Joined: Sep 30th, 2010
Gender: Male
Re: Haw Scrapers
Reply #21 - Feb 4th, 2018 at 9:32pm
Print Post  
A couple other little finds were another partial atlatl weight and a gun flint.
I don't know if the atlatl weight was ever finished or used. It is made from a beautiful "serpentine" that can be found in many areas of NC, but very hard to find any good "workable" material, as I think this prehistoric craftsman discovered. It seems if the source you find around here is large enough to possibly work with, it has pockets that are too weathered and decomposed to hold together. Many times the high grade vein will be an eighth to quarter inch wide in a massive boulder and no way to get to it. A beautiful material none the less that I always try to keep an eye out for.
The gun flint is of course historic and most probably European flint.

A bunch of pics of the atlatl weight and a couple of the gun flint.


  

DSCN1022.JPG ( 238 KB | 58 Downloads )
DSCN1022.JPG
DSCN1024.JPG ( 254 KB | 78 Downloads )
DSCN1024.JPG
DSCN1028.JPG ( 218 KB | 94 Downloads )
DSCN1028.JPG
DSCN1031.JPG ( 240 KB | 55 Downloads )
DSCN1031.JPG
DSCN1030.JPG ( 242 KB | 68 Downloads )
DSCN1030.JPG
DSCN1033.JPG ( 238 KB | 62 Downloads )
DSCN1033.JPG
DSCN1037.JPG ( 225 KB | 61 Downloads )
DSCN1037.JPG
DSCN1046.JPG ( 209 KB | 73 Downloads )
DSCN1046.JPG
Back to top
 
IP Logged
 
JoeM
God Member
*****
Offline


I Love YaBB 2.5 AE!

Posts: 4178
Location: Wake County, NC
Joined: Sep 30th, 2010
Gender: Male
Re: Haw Scrapers
Reply #22 - Feb 5th, 2018 at 7:52pm
Print Post  
Quartz and Quartzite, The "Secondary" Lithic Material.

Quartz gets such poor consideration in archaeology. "The aboriginals would only use it if they were starving and it was all they could find", sort of attitude. When the real problem is that quartz is so poorly understood. Much can be learned from Quartz, of course we all know that all ready.  Wink

Since I had to move them I might as well take a pic.
First pic is the whole lot. From the two large blades pointing at each other in the middle and the top row are all quartzite. The bottom row is pieces and parts of quartz.
Then some close-ups of the quartzite.
And finally,
Of all the artifacts in the first picture, only ONE is from the same time period as ceramic pottery. All the others were made before the time of ceramics. Can you guess which one it is before looking at the last picture? Undecided


  

DSCN0954.JPG ( 181 KB | 85 Downloads )
DSCN0954.JPG
DSCN0964.JPG ( 152 KB | 74 Downloads )
DSCN0964.JPG
DSCN0965.JPG ( 209 KB | 79 Downloads )
DSCN0965.JPG
DSCN0967.JPG ( 175 KB | 76 Downloads )
DSCN0967.JPG
DSCN0980.JPG ( 246 KB | 70 Downloads )
DSCN0980.JPG
DSCN0983.JPG ( 198 KB | 78 Downloads )
DSCN0983.JPG
Back to top
 
IP Logged
 
JoeM
God Member
*****
Offline


I Love YaBB 2.5 AE!

Posts: 4178
Location: Wake County, NC
Joined: Sep 30th, 2010
Gender: Male
Re: Haw Scrapers
Reply #23 - Feb 5th, 2018 at 9:22pm
Print Post  
I hesitate to include these pics because they are not that great of examples of,
Bi-Polar Reduction: A Coastal Plains Technology.

The area I collected these artifacts is a stretch of the north side of the Haw River a few miles above where the Haw and Deep Rivers come together and form the Cape Fear River. This confluence can be considered the beginning, or western edge of the Coastal Plain, tho I have not looked to see where that boundary is actually marked on geologic maps.
To the Native American these boundaries, from the Piedmont to the Coastal Plain as well as Mountains, were not just changes in topography but also in physiology. Inherent adaptations had to be made to survive in these different regions which means a necessary  change in technologies used.

It was interesting to me to see how much obvious occupation using coastal plain technology and material was in this area. Being so close to sources of good volcanic material they obviously chose to go with what they were accustomed to.
In the coastal plain they can not walk up the nearby hill or mountain and chip away on a good source of rock, because there isn't any. One main source of lithic material in the coastal plain are rounded water worn cobbles found clustered in areas of elevation drop in creeks and rivers. There's all kinds of different grades of material in those cobbles and I suppose you develop an eye for the good stuff.

The rounded cobbles pictured below are poor examples but what I had handy. When "chipping" into a round rock there's one obvious question that comes to mind right off the bat. Where do you begin?
Thinking Bi-Polar Reduction,
You stand that cobble up on one side or end on some anvil type rock and hit the other end with another big rock and instead of smashing it you try and get long spalls or flakes off the sides to make something out of.
The first pic and close-up are of the side with natural worn exterior showing.
And that's it for this drawer! Cool


  

DSCN1011.JPG ( 253 KB | 93 Downloads )
DSCN1011.JPG
DSCN1019.JPG ( 254 KB | 93 Downloads )
DSCN1019.JPG
DSCN1009.JPG ( 152 KB | 70 Downloads )
DSCN1009.JPG
Back to top
 
IP Logged
 
Rebecca
God Member
*****
Offline


I Love YaBB 2.5 AE!

Posts: 653
Joined: Nov 11th, 2010
Gender: Female
Re: Haw Scrapers
Reply #24 - Feb 6th, 2018 at 9:21am
Print Post  
That is a LOT of information in a few pieces of rock and all of it is so interesting and important. Thanks for showing and the food for thought.
Wait, first of all, you found a European gun flint!?
I can't believe they would work those quartzite eggs!
I am most curious about the quartzite right now...I have lots of worked artifacts made from quartzite. Which looking at the work, seems they were very skilled and had to have had a "catalog' of skills and understanding of material and the qualities of different materials. Even though they might prefer the waxy black flint with its great integrity (seems easier to have worked to me); they still must have used quartzite in preference sometimes. Both materials are all over here in E TN, and I find tons of quartzite debitage and black/grey flint debitage, and equal amounts of partially worked or broken pieces of both materials.
I know I know I need to take pics. I will! As soon as I find some of this stuff that I have found.  Wink
That spotty rhyolite is neat. How do you think spots formed in the solution? Air bubbles?
A lot of the jasper and agate I am finding is FULL of tiny spots, circles. Some of the stuff is definitely brecciated agate, so I am wondering if some of the circles are grains of sand..???
Is this spotty rhyolite the same material as that orbicular rhyolite you have found that has more of a green color?
Do you have that milky quartz native over in your area?
I don't have time to find and take pics today, but can leave you with a tasty morsel of a song. Check out Tyler Childers'- "Banded Clovis". Only if you can appreciate Americana with a HEAVY dose of Appalachia.
« Last Edit: Feb 6th, 2018 at 10:26am by Rebecca »  
Back to top
 
IP Logged
 
JoeM
God Member
*****
Offline


I Love YaBB 2.5 AE!

Posts: 4178
Location: Wake County, NC
Joined: Sep 30th, 2010
Gender: Male
Re: Haw Scrapers
Reply #25 - Feb 6th, 2018 at 7:20pm
Print Post  
Yeah, dave allready alerted me to the "Banded Clovis" song.
Cool song. Sounds pretty real to me. Wink

Most gunflints found here on the east coast are made from European flints. Mainly England, France, and Spain. They had the flint sources and the industry. At that time we had neither. This one is white flint and probably English. I don't remember ever seeing a gunflint from local material but I'm sure the need would have arisen for an industrious person to do so.

The "spots" are different things depending on the rock you are talking about. There is a volcanic igneous porphyritic rhyo-dacite where the spots are different pieces and clasts of minerals. But I believe I have pieces of sedimentary that has "spots" too.
The spherulitic rhyolite and the spotty stuff are in the same family but formed differently.

And heck yeah we have milky quartz!
We probably have more milky quartz than you do.  Wink
  
Back to top
 
IP Logged
 
Page Index Toggle Pages: 1 [2] 
Send TopicPrint