Thank You I feel Better now.

[Rokcet Scientist]

I read about the internet making knowledge dangerous in here or should i say too little knowledge.
Then i look at a startling collection of pre-clovis artefacts so i show some rather good and easy to identify items sadly though it seems the internet a great teacher when it comes to rare items it skips the basics .As for the pre-clovis items i am sorry ,wish you luck with them but they do not appear to have any of the signs visible that point to them being artefacts.
P.S. I threw in the fossil picture as an idiot check its a mammoth tooth.
cheers Terry.

See?
It was only a matter of time, dd mate.

[Charlie Hatchett]

One of the experiments we tried was taking a big piece of quartz-like rock and using it to bash a piece of chert.

The "hammer" broke...the "nail" was just fine. Fracturing these hard stones "naturally" would take a lot of force and the only natural force I can think of is gravity. As I said above, it is an area of soft rolling hills. There are no cliffs like we have here in Arizona.

Until you get out onto the site, it's hard to truly visualize how much the proposed tools stand out. The vast, vast majority of the rocks are well rounded from the stream action and covered with a thick cortex of carbonate. Most of the proposed tools are not smoothed like the vast majority of naturally occurring stones, much if not all of the cortex is removed from them, and they have multiple hard impact signatures.

Here are some images of the naturally occurring gravel for any interested:

http://www.phpbb88.com/nohandaxesinus/v ... ndaxesinus

http://www.phpbb88.com/nohandaxesinus/v ... ndaxesinus

[Rokcet Scientist]

BTW, you may want to try some professional macro lighting gear for your pix:

[Charlie Hatchett]

Most flint tools seem to me to have been used to manufacture other tools, digging sticks, spear shafts, needles, and probably a lot of perishable artifacts that have been lost to us.
Try some of the stuff you have recovered, and who says that man didn't use stone that had been broken naturally anyway?

We had a bit of a chat in here earlier, wondering if the handaxes might have been used for woodworking along with animal butchering and any other heavy chopping apps.

[Minimalist]

As we showed, they are effective for chopping into small trees.

[Charlie Hatchett]

As we showed, they are effective for chopping into small trees.

Do you still have images of the experiment?

[Charlie Hatchett]

BTW, you may want to try some professional macro lighting gear for your pix:

I'll give it a shot. Thanks!

[Forum Monk]

Actually, ice will crack the toughest rock quite nicely and in some cases, plants can as well.

Pictures do not always tell the story. I have just returned from a trip to Day's Knob in east central Ohio and visited with Alan Day. I looked first hand at some of his effigy pieces and the perspective one sees in person is sometimes quite different than in a photo. While I have no doubt, a trained expert can tell many things from a simple picture, an up close look with proper lighting, often reveals important clues.

[Charlie Hatchett]

Actually, ice will crack the toughest rock quite nicely and in some cases, plants can as well.

True, as will heat. The fracture marks are different than hard impact fractures. though. I'll try to post some comparison images later.

an up close look with proper lighting, often reveals important clues

Nothing like the real thing, ey? That's cool that you went to visit Alan.

[Beagle]

Pictures do not always tell the story. I have just returned from a trip to Day's Knob in east central Ohio and visited with Alan Day. I looked first hand at some of his effigy pieces and the perspective one sees in person is sometimes quite different than in a photo. While I have no doubt, a trained expert can tell many things from a simple picture, an up close look with proper lighting, often reveals important clues.

That's pretty neat F/M. Sounds like a productive trip. Alan must be fairly close to the Great Serpent Mound, which I'm hoping to see next spring.

[Forum Monk]

That's pretty neat F/M. Sounds like a productive trip. Alan must be fairly close to the Great Serpent Mound, which I'm hoping to see next spring.

It was a very interesting trip to say the least.

Serpent mound is close to Cincinnato in a rural area. I would guessimate an additional three hour drive to Day's Knob. Not all that close really.

[AD]

Greetings...

Yes, F.M.'s visit, along with a metallurgist colleague, was quite productive and a lot of fun. In addition to their observations of my own material, their comments and suggestions on the iron and glass artifacts from Dave Gillilan's finds were most helpful. (For the current status of the Gillilan project - fun reading for you "Club" fans - see http://www.daysknob.com/DG.htm .) Of course iron objects are a subject dear to Charlie Hatchett's heart, and rightly so; his little magnetic bird figures look quite genuine to me, and almost certainly very old.

Beagle, yes, I am roughly a three-hour rather circuitous drive from the Great Serpent Mound, but if you have the time and inclination, you are most welcome to visit; just let me know when/if you want to do this. When you are at the Serpent, you should also visit the fairly close mound complex by Chillicothe. That whole area is full of earthworks from around two thousand years ago. And in that vicinity you should see Spruce Hill, a very large walled Hopewell (and probably earlier) hilltop site. I toured that place a few weeks ago when the Arc of Appalachia Preserve System folks were enlisting support for rescuing the place from sale to loggers and real estate developers. (See http://www.highlandssanctuary.org/Hopew ... cehill.htm .) It's interesting that a large quantity of apparently iron slag has appeared at that site and others nearby, including the Gillilan artifact cache. I was informed that while the Ohio archaeological establishment is highly supportive of preserving and excavating Spruce Hill, they are vehemently opposed to even the suggestion of prehistoric iron smelting. Predictably, there has long been "hyperdiffusionist" speculation that the smelting was done by Viking explorers, and I sure am not going to bite on that one. From the context of Dave Gillilan's material five feet down in undisturbed terrain, and those artifacts' distinctly Native American morphological hallmarks, it looks to me like they were manufactured by native inhabitants generally in the Late Archaic to Early Woodland time frame. Fun stuff!

Regards, Alan
http://www.daysknob.com

[Charlie Hatchett]

From the context of Dave Gillilan's material five feet down in undisturbed terrain, and those artifacts' distinctly Native American morphological hallmarks, it looks to me like they were manufactured by native inhabitants generally in the Late Archaic to Early Woodland time frame. Fun stuff!

Metallurgy seems to have been occurring in your neck of the woods, and north to northeast, at a very early time, Alan:

http://www.copperculture.homestead.com/

http://www.ramtops.co.uk/copper.html

http://www.uwlax.edu/MVAC/PreEuropeanPe ... lture.html

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/ ... opper.html

[AD]

Hi Charlie...

Yes indeed. But the web pages you link to deal with copper, and hammering copper is one thing, smelting and intricately forming hot iron and slag into symbolic objects quite another. Be this as it may, it seems apparent from what you and I - and others - are seeing, that iron working was being done a very long time ago in both Ohio and Texas, so almost certainly in many other places on this continent. It's a real hard sell, of course...

While "argumentation from absence" is a usually unconvincing hallmark of academic archaeological rhetoric, there is the rather awkward fact that there is no recorded observation of iron smelting by Native Americans at the time of the Europeans' arrival here, and this does require some explaining on our part. After some head scratching, I came up with this tentative hypothesis, related at least to the time line here in Ohio: The iron artifacts here have little or no apparent practical utility, being mainly symbolic in nature. Around the time of the nominal transition from Middle to Late Woodland (roughly 1500 years ago), there was a marked cultural decline for whatever reason, characterized by ceasing to build large ceremonial centers, consolidating into relatively isolated communities, and greatly reducing the production of art. Assuming that, again for whatever reason, people were reacting to the stress of having to concentrate on survival-related activities, perhaps iron working, which apparently was only for the production of symbolic objects - obviously time-consuming and labor-intensive - fell by the wayside, and the technology was simply forgotten and lost over time. Just an idea...

Regards, Alan

[Minimalist]

Having had the opportunity to hold Charlie's "metal bird artifact" in my own hand I can tell you that... whatever it may be....it isn't a rock.