Archaeologica.org

Hi guys.

Just got back from a little salvaging this morning. We had some strong rains last night. I'll try to highlight a few more of the finds today.

Here's what I've interpreted to be a ocher stained, wooden tool:



http://cayman.globat.com/~bandstexas.com/wood%201.jpg

Ca. 3.5' in length.



http://cayman.globat.com/~bandstexas.com/wood%202.jpg

Note the proximal end "knapping". Looks just like rock knapping to me...



http://cayman.globat.com/~bandstexas.com/wood%203.jpg

Note the distal end "knapping". Again, looks just like rock knapping to me...

Some sort of "digging stick" to loosen roots, perhaps?

Got any beavers around there, Charlie?

Some sort of "digging stick" to loosen roots, perhaps?

Perhaps...

Got any beavers around there, Charlie?

Lived here 42 years and never heard of a beaver around these parts. Not sure if they live anywhere in Texas...maybe East Texas??

No soy, Amigos. Always something strange popping up here. I'll put some more definitive stone tools up next....

Looks like it may have been gnawed by some type of rodent. There are beavers here in East Texas. I don't know about where you are. A big rat could have done it. Wood doesn't usually preserve that well for any length of time. What was the context? Any idea about the age of the stick? I hope you recorded in detail exactly where you found it.

Hey! Look who the cat dragged in.

Why would an animal only gnaw the ends and not take a chomp on the middle?

Looks like it may have been gnawed by some type of rodent. There are beavers here in East Texas. I don't know about where you are. A big rat could have done it. Wood doesn't usually preserve that well for any length of time. What was the context? Any idea about the age of the stick? I hope you recorded in detail exactly where you found it.

What's up Rascal?

(Quick side note: Just so everyone knows, Frank has been a big help since I first stumbled across this site back in Summer, 2005. He got the Texas Historical Society to come out and GPS, and catalogue the site. Of course, when your trying to convince someone of prehistoric iron smelting in Texas...well...you know...it's not the easiest "sell"...)

Frank, there's no context..it could have floated downstream 15 miles, for all I know. We do have nutrea around here:



Looks pretty beaverish to me...

Why would an animal only gnaw the ends and not take a chomp on the middle?

Good point. The whole length is pecked, but not grooved like the ends.

Then the ochre staining...

Again, no soy, Amigos...

It would be gnawed on the ends as that is how it was "chopped" down by the critter. It wasn't necessarily to be used as food, but could have been used as building material for the beaver or nutrea's dam or lodge. Nutrea don't make dams, but the do build lodges much like beavers. We have those around here too. Is the staining from ochre or from iron ore? That is a substance we have in abundance here in my area.
You just keep coming up with stranger and stranger stuff, Charlie. Damn! I want to come down there and spend a few weeks! I'd like to put in some test units back away from the creek a ways. Have you heard anything else from the steward I hooked you up with? Send me her email and I'll light a fire under her ass. As I recall I emailed her before and never got a response. I can't even remember her name now.

It would be gnawed on the ends as that is how it was "chopped" down by the critter

That would explain one end.

BTW, I agree with you. From what Charlie has shown the area seems to be too wet to encourage the long-term survival of wood...but...when did beavers start staining their dams with ochre?

Well, they gnaw one end to chop it down and the other end to remove the limbs. Iron ore can leach into water and into any wood submerged in that water for a long period of time. Iron ore is red too, like ochre. Just a possible explanation. I think we're all guessing here. Right?

Right.

Unless someone has videotape.

Charlie,

What you have there is a classic piece of beaver-chewed wood (cottonwood?). Probably not a tool unless the right-angled projection is a stone blade mounted to the shaft...

Rkeyo
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Well, Frank, you got a pro that agrees... I'm learning. Rodents gnawing rocks, bones and wood. All three fooled me in my first encounter...Wonder if the red stain is just part of the color under the bark?

Anyway, I'll chalk this one up as a learning experience.

We have lots of beavers here in NC, and you see their work all the time around the edges of lakes. They eat the cambium layer off trees, like deer, and also green twigs. They cut down trees and cut off branches
to make their lodges and dams. But like all rodents, they also need to chew stuff to keep their teeth the proper length. You sometimes see places in the woods that look like sawmills, with chips lying all over the place among randomly chewed lengths of wood.
Ochre is a kind of iron oxide.

Looks like an ice pik that I have made out of iron and wood.

Hi Charlie...

It's interesting but not surprising that you have found one of these apparently carved sticks in Texas. They are quite common here in Ohio, certainly at the site I have been investigating for quite a while. They are often carved with parallel grooves at the pointed end, or on a side of the stick near this end when it is cleanly cut at about a forty-five degree angle. (Often this end is quite identifiably formed into the head of a bird or quasi-anthropomorphic figure.) No, the marks are not rodent gnawings. I know much better than I like what mice, etc. do, and believe me, they are not that well organized. The markings on the sticks are much too uniform in their length and orientation, and also they do not seem to exhibit the narrow ridge between adjacent grooves typically formed by paired incisors.

My tentative hypothesis is that these objects are precursors of the well-known Native American "prayer sticks". As for temporal association, several of these appeared recently with a large cache of very nice flint, quartz, and calcedony points and blades professionally identified as Late Archaic at another site in southern Ohio, buried 1.5 meter beneath the surface. So maybe that's the age of your material, at least in the stratum in which these appeared. (Hard to say - that whole iconography seems to have originated somewhere far back in the Paleolithic.) And by the way, wood buried tightly in a more or less anaerobic environment has lasted in fairly good condition for many thousands of years.

Regards, AD