No more messing around! The Director of the Massachusetts Archaeological Society is coming here today to see my collection of crude stone 'tools' and to dig a couple of test pits. This is in preperation for a proper dig we will likely do later this spring and summer. I will report back if we find anything and what he thinks about my 'tools'.
If daylight permits I may take him 10 minutes up the road to a documented Pokanoket site. There he will see a few very large granite boulders that have obviously been worked and have shapes cut into them. The figuring and patterns are similiar to what I find here on some of my 'tools'. Of course it doesn't mean it was done by the Pokanoket. That spot would have been visited by anyone travelling up the east coast at any time previous to them.
It would be incredibly interesting if it could have been the Mound Builders or someone else prior to the Pokanokets. The site actually looks much like a huge mound. But of course it has never been officially dug and it is not documented as such, so one has to say it is likely just a naturally formed hill. Either way, the Pokanokets were recorded as living and working the land in that area when the Pilgrims arrived in 1620.
Full Version: Archeologist visit today
How interesting! Good for you, and please keep us informed. Good luck.
I look forward to it 
It seems obvious that there is a long history of human settlement in your area, the real question is what exactly are the stones you have collected and how do they fit in?
Hopefully some light will be shed.
It seems obvious that there is a long history of human settlement in your area, the real question is what exactly are the stones you have collected and how do they fit in?
Hopefully some light will be shed.
Lots of luck..and hope you find something significant.
I would love to see some pictures of the tools, and bolders if thats possible! It all sounds very interesting, and i wish you good luck! I really hope to hear more about what you find!
Well, it turns out that at least half of the items I have found are good examples of ventrifacts. -Rocks shaped by wind blown sand and clay has caused fluting, chipping, faceting and polishing into one or more faces of these particular rocks. This means they were guarenteed to have spent thousands of years on the surface around here during the early harsh windy environment, post glacial. This extreme shaping is suspected to have taken over many hundreds if not many thousands of years.
The glacier moved out of here around 25,000 years ago, and when it receded it left behind rocks on or near the surface. The stones that remained exposed on the surface long enough were effected by a harsh windy desertlike environment which caused this and many kinds of figuring on one or more faces of the stones. While it is entirely possible that early inhabitants would have found these and found them useful as tools, it does mean it is much more difficult to say for sure which ones were used as tools and which ones just have uncanny shapes naturally. I completely understand why he wouldn't want to try to decide on these anything beyond just ventrifacts.. I am sure many of these are ' just ventrifacts', but I also still hang on to and believe that some or many of them started as 'just ventrifacts', But because of the uncanny shapes and apparent reworking I pointed to, may have been found to be useful, collected, modified further, and used as tools.
For the archeologists visit, I did not spend much time on my 'crude stone tools' as I had been warned not to expect any support on these. Anyway, I wanted to find some context for a dig and we only had two hours.. After showing him my first couple gems, I knew not to waste anymore of his or my time on this. He did however positively identify a scraper or worn arrowhead point I found here and an axe (read tomahawk) head my neighbor had found nearby. He said the axe head was likely 500 to 1000 years old from the late woodland period. This was his first impression anyway and he wanted to get back to them and investigate them further to confirm where the mother stone came from etc.. But we were pressed for time.
He liked our location here as being a likely site to find some artefacts. Our house is located on a 3/4 acre lot facing the South-Western shore of a nice sized (waterskiing anyone), glacially formed, freshwater kettle pond, not far from the ocean, in rolling hills with many ponds nearby and brooks connecting some local ponds to the ocean within miles of here. these are still active fish runs... We have two old roads or horse paths that run through our property here. One runs perpendicular to our house and goes right by our front door. The other follows the curving lakeshore and heads directly through our house. It must have met the other road at about our front door or something. I can only speculate that these were the naturally chosen lakeside paths that would have been used by the first people to happen accross the area and anyone since for that matter as a practical path following the shoreline.
Anyway, we dug 4 small test pits 1 1/2' x 1 1/2' square and sifted through the dirt. The first one was on or just next to the old 'road' in front of our house, just off to the side near a tree where I had found one of my better crude 'tools'. In this hole we found two more ventrifacts that were again about the right size and shape to be useful as tools but were not interesting to him. Nothing else. They had some nice figuring and were of a common, usable size and shape again, but nothing else.
The second pit we dug was about ten feet away from the waters edge where we found almost nothing under the topsoil but quartz white sand with only a few small tumbled (polished) quartz stones .. We made it down to a hard packed , sandy-clay, likely the glacial hard pack, and called it quits. We agreed it was probably part of the lake at one point and had likely filled in as sand washed down the hill to become land on the shoreline over time. The good news is it was once the shoreline, bad news is, it wouldn't have been habitable if it were wet or underwater for much of it's history. Maybe good hunting... So we moved on. I will likely dig that whole area this summer. Unnderstanding the stratigraphy now will make all the difference hunting down more artefacts..
We headed up the hillside in search of flatter areas and dug two more test pits away from the water and still no obvious artifacts. There was some good stratigraphy to work with, completely different, but nothing for artefacts to sink your teeth into. My 5 year old son was thrilled with a few tumbled quartz rocks... Anyway that was it. He agreed to come back and look further as we had only just begun it seemed. We had spent much of the time walking the lot and discussing things, as opposed to just being focused on digging... He offered to come back, but I told him I would dig a bunch more test pits myself with the same techniques he showed me and would let him know if/when I locate a spot with obvious artefacts. Then we'll have him back. Before he left he showed me his trunk full of beautiful artefacts. He was here for just over two hours and that time went fast.
In his trunk he showed us a very impressive collection of arrowheads, spear points, a ceremonial efigy mortar, and a bunch of other incredible stuff. He had the best of ... It was all from a dig he has been working on recently. The site he is digging is along a river in Middleboro MA, accross from where the Wampanoags are building what hopes to be Massachusetts' first casino. According to him, they are going to build it pretty quicky and are not going to slow down for artefacts. Some of the artefacts he had found already were dated at 6000 years old- very cool. He has a very large number of people digging a good size area, top to bottom... They have already found over 2000 artefacts and over 200 arrowheads, if I heard him right... That's a big dig!
While ventrifaction explains one of the predominate visual characteristics of many of the items I have found it is only on some of them. Ventrifacts still make good opportunistic tools. Others are granite and do not appear to be ventrifacts at all but still look worked to me and other people I have shown them to. Anyway I am not satisfied yet and therefore I have no choice but to keep digging.
The glacier moved out of here around 25,000 years ago, and when it receded it left behind rocks on or near the surface. The stones that remained exposed on the surface long enough were effected by a harsh windy desertlike environment which caused this and many kinds of figuring on one or more faces of the stones. While it is entirely possible that early inhabitants would have found these and found them useful as tools, it does mean it is much more difficult to say for sure which ones were used as tools and which ones just have uncanny shapes naturally. I completely understand why he wouldn't want to try to decide on these anything beyond just ventrifacts.. I am sure many of these are ' just ventrifacts', but I also still hang on to and believe that some or many of them started as 'just ventrifacts', But because of the uncanny shapes and apparent reworking I pointed to, may have been found to be useful, collected, modified further, and used as tools.
For the archeologists visit, I did not spend much time on my 'crude stone tools' as I had been warned not to expect any support on these. Anyway, I wanted to find some context for a dig and we only had two hours.. After showing him my first couple gems, I knew not to waste anymore of his or my time on this. He did however positively identify a scraper or worn arrowhead point I found here and an axe (read tomahawk) head my neighbor had found nearby. He said the axe head was likely 500 to 1000 years old from the late woodland period. This was his first impression anyway and he wanted to get back to them and investigate them further to confirm where the mother stone came from etc.. But we were pressed for time.
He liked our location here as being a likely site to find some artefacts. Our house is located on a 3/4 acre lot facing the South-Western shore of a nice sized (waterskiing anyone), glacially formed, freshwater kettle pond, not far from the ocean, in rolling hills with many ponds nearby and brooks connecting some local ponds to the ocean within miles of here. these are still active fish runs... We have two old roads or horse paths that run through our property here. One runs perpendicular to our house and goes right by our front door. The other follows the curving lakeshore and heads directly through our house. It must have met the other road at about our front door or something. I can only speculate that these were the naturally chosen lakeside paths that would have been used by the first people to happen accross the area and anyone since for that matter as a practical path following the shoreline.
Anyway, we dug 4 small test pits 1 1/2' x 1 1/2' square and sifted through the dirt. The first one was on or just next to the old 'road' in front of our house, just off to the side near a tree where I had found one of my better crude 'tools'. In this hole we found two more ventrifacts that were again about the right size and shape to be useful as tools but were not interesting to him. Nothing else. They had some nice figuring and were of a common, usable size and shape again, but nothing else.
The second pit we dug was about ten feet away from the waters edge where we found almost nothing under the topsoil but quartz white sand with only a few small tumbled (polished) quartz stones .. We made it down to a hard packed , sandy-clay, likely the glacial hard pack, and called it quits. We agreed it was probably part of the lake at one point and had likely filled in as sand washed down the hill to become land on the shoreline over time. The good news is it was once the shoreline, bad news is, it wouldn't have been habitable if it were wet or underwater for much of it's history. Maybe good hunting... So we moved on. I will likely dig that whole area this summer. Unnderstanding the stratigraphy now will make all the difference hunting down more artefacts..
We headed up the hillside in search of flatter areas and dug two more test pits away from the water and still no obvious artifacts. There was some good stratigraphy to work with, completely different, but nothing for artefacts to sink your teeth into. My 5 year old son was thrilled with a few tumbled quartz rocks... Anyway that was it. He agreed to come back and look further as we had only just begun it seemed. We had spent much of the time walking the lot and discussing things, as opposed to just being focused on digging... He offered to come back, but I told him I would dig a bunch more test pits myself with the same techniques he showed me and would let him know if/when I locate a spot with obvious artefacts. Then we'll have him back. Before he left he showed me his trunk full of beautiful artefacts. He was here for just over two hours and that time went fast.
In his trunk he showed us a very impressive collection of arrowheads, spear points, a ceremonial efigy mortar, and a bunch of other incredible stuff. He had the best of ... It was all from a dig he has been working on recently. The site he is digging is along a river in Middleboro MA, accross from where the Wampanoags are building what hopes to be Massachusetts' first casino. According to him, they are going to build it pretty quicky and are not going to slow down for artefacts. Some of the artefacts he had found already were dated at 6000 years old- very cool. He has a very large number of people digging a good size area, top to bottom... They have already found over 2000 artefacts and over 200 arrowheads, if I heard him right... That's a big dig!
While ventrifaction explains one of the predominate visual characteristics of many of the items I have found it is only on some of them. Ventrifacts still make good opportunistic tools. Others are granite and do not appear to be ventrifacts at all but still look worked to me and other people I have shown them to. Anyway I am not satisfied yet and therefore I have no choice but to keep digging.
Thanks for the update, RS. I've been fascinated following this thread. Good luck and good hunting.
Very interesting, I look forward to hearing what you come up with in the future
Lake shores are indeed a good place to look, my father lived next to the remnants of an old post glacial lake when he was a young man. They used to find numerous things along the old shoreline, and on one occassion happened to plow up an old flintlock rifle when he was cultivating the field next to the lake.
It would be interesting to see if you can find any of your stones in association with other artifacts or arranged in any patterns that would suggest usage.
In southern Alberta where I live, "Tipi Rings" are not uncommon on the open prairie where they have not been disturbed by modern development.
Tipi Rings: http://tprc.alberta.ca/museums/historicsit...gs/default.aspx
Lake shores are indeed a good place to look, my father lived next to the remnants of an old post glacial lake when he was a young man. They used to find numerous things along the old shoreline, and on one occassion happened to plow up an old flintlock rifle when he was cultivating the field next to the lake.
It would be interesting to see if you can find any of your stones in association with other artifacts or arranged in any patterns that would suggest usage.
In southern Alberta where I live, "Tipi Rings" are not uncommon on the open prairie where they have not been disturbed by modern development.
Tipi Rings: http://tprc.alberta.ca/museums/historicsit...gs/default.aspx
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