Charlie, you truely have one fascinating site there, as I've mentioned before. I would love to visit the site one day with you and have a look around. You need a geologist to help answer a lot of your questions.
It surely does look like some type of metallurgical productions going on.
These rectangular pits with a blowhole conncetion are certainly puzzling.
But if these where done by early prehistoric man, I keep asking myself
what type of tool would they have used to drill the vent hole. I believe you
said this was in a limestone formation. Limestone can be chipped with a harder stone perhaps, like a granite maybe. And that could easily be chipped out to make the rectangular pit, but to drill a long hole with a bow drill takes a lot of ingenuity. Someone did not just stumple on this technique by accident. And if they where using this area for metallurgical production,with the permanent pits, there has to be a nice size hamlet or village close by for sure. You need to get a good picture in your mind of what the setting was perhaps during this time frame, and move up to some high ground and look for an area where a village could be found. Of course, I would imagine this would be deep since this stuff your finding is eroding out of a creek. A little geomorphology is need here most definitely.
And looking at your picture from Nov 01, with the points and shells.
Those definately look like shells to me. The shells, 2nd top right, and
3rd on the left look like drill holes in the pictures. Shells were very common for necklaces and trade goods for prehistoric people as you know. But that lowest item, bottom middle, is not shell. That looks like
stone. I'm guessing a limestone, with a natural hole formation. Perhaps from a fossil, or some other solfter element that eroded and left a hole.
We see this commanly in the SEastern U.S. in our Cretaceous Period
rocks.
But, I could take you off shore to a oyster shell reef in the Gulf where
we use to fish and you could pick up shells just like these. As the shells
break down they look very common to this picture. In fact, there is little critter called an oyster drill. He drills small circular holes into a live oyster,
then crawls inside and eats the oyster. The holes appear almost man made. In fact, early man probably took advantage of these pre-drilled holes to string shells. So, it's hard to say if these shells in this picture are
man made or made by an oyster drill. These could be very natural, and found on a very old reef, along a coast line that existed in this area way back in time. There again, you need a bit of geomorphology to figure this area out. I want venture and speculate on the points. But there are a lot of Early Archaic points and tools in that picture. Points aren't my specialty. And I have yet to see any pottery in pictures that you have shown. Another indication that you have a very early site here, most likely.