Texas site#1 pendants and necklace

[texasriverdigger]

This is a shell necklace with a petrified bone pendant, and the others are of clay and sand stone notice the wear marks on the one piece like it was used to grind or sharpen something?and the holes on a couple of pieces they used a piece of cane to make the holes?

[Johnny X]

very nice~


xstevenx

[Adena_man]

Very nice! Keep'em coming!

[texasriverdigger]

Thanks all... I dont know what these could have been used for but here are a few more... Thanks again...

[fossis]

Nice shell beads, the bigger stones could be net
weights, maybe?

Fossis.................

[texasriverdigger]

This is a few more shell pieces that I found at that site, I think they were more pendents? Thanks... Mike

[Neanderthal]

You have a far better imagination than me my friend. Many of those are undoubtedly geofacts, oddities of nature. It's common to see weird popouts or fossil casts in stone that resemble something manufactured. I know that many shells found with holes in the center of them are caused by birds..i've seen them do it. Freaked me out one day at the lake, I heard "boom, boom!". I turned around to see a water bird beating the hell out of a shell, it commenced to knock a very clean, large, circular hole in the top of it. Since that day, I've observed other birds doing the same thing. Down south in some coastal areas, they also have worms that bore into shells and it will resemble drilling holes (I'm told). ANYONE that has been collecting long has picked up several items thinking they were artifacts..I've done it myself. Everyone has, if they say they haven't, then they are most likely fibbing or never found out the difference. The more common things I see in collections that are mistaken for artifacts are: Fossils / casts, limestone & ironstone concretions (probably THE most common), Crinoid stems (although some were used as beads - most weren't), Battery cores (the really can resemble a bar banner or pecked and ground item), spalls (by-product, debris, but often thought to be a completed artifact), Historic crockery (can fool even the best), wiring insulators (super common, people think they are tube pipes)....and there are many more! My favorite one of all time was a lady who had a rock that she could "see and indian riding a horse in it..if you look hard enough"....it was a chunk of road asphalt.

I'm not saying all of your artifacts are geofacts, but some of them I'm pretty sure are. I just hope to stir people to check for tooling marks when unsure of the origins..and to learn how to properly identify manufacturing marks. Thanks for sharing! I really do like looking at them.

[Atlantis0077]

Hey Matt,

Gotta agree with you there. I find tons of that sort of stuff at Toledo. Rocks with holes and the hard clay that washes off the banks have wonderful holes depressions and lines. Insects also bore into the hard clay pieces giving some really bizarre traits.

Shell artifacts are normally very fragile and pendants normally have holes centered for wearing just like we would today. LOL at battery cores....Have found many of them myself.....and don't forget the Door Knob...LOL Here we have a lot of iron ore objects...some would be considered hematite, but unless its really good quality, I call it iron ore. You get many "tubes" and round rocks in various sizes...many here call them "pop rocks" because they have a hollow on the inside which collects moisture and when you throw them in a fire they will explode.....I wish I had a dollar for everytime I have been fooled.

One rule of thumb I use on that sort of thing. The Indians were for the most part very precise and when they made beads, pendants, gorgets and other such items, they did so very carefully. Pieces are polished, normally rather symmetrical.....holes are drilled with precision and normally larger to smaller diameter on a piece. Also look at your type of stone. Very hard cherts and flints, though used for pendants and such, were chosen far less than slate, hematite, soapstone, catlinite and other stones which were easier to drill, shape and polish.

I don't know about other places, but here in Louisiana, polished stone beads and other artifacts are quite rare. You would be quite lucky to find just a few in a lifetime of searching.

Happy Hunting,

Atlantis

[ohioaxeman]

i may have one of those battery pipes. one thing thats for sure is that for last 12 years, everytime i looked at and handled it, it left black powdery marks on my hands, but only from the hollowed inside. makes me wonder what it really is!

[Abbey]

Hey Tex- You'd go nuts around here! Those things are everywhere! At least the shells and a bunch of those rocks. Some of them look like pendants- or something intentional. But the rest... I just don't know. I've put an awful lot of rocks back down that looked a lot like those. I had to ask myself, when someone can make a utilitarian arrow point which looks to me to be as beautiful as jewelry, why would they wear a common rock around their neck? At least that's MY reasoning. There doesn't seem to be any 'crafting' of the pieces at all. Just a hole. Like the other guys said, there are a lot of things which can put a hole in a rock or shell. I saw your post a couple days ago. Went out to the river beach near me where I hunt, and thought to myself, that guy would have a backhoe and dump truck out here- and scoop up the whole beach-- so many rocks with 'suspicious' holes in them!! Sometimes I wonder if something were made by a 'newby' or brave-in-training, but one thing is for certain, those ancient people were no hacks. Their goods were stunning, for the most part. I just can't wrap myself around the notion that they'd just drill a hole and make a necklace out of the ugliest rocks they could find- when they'd use the most beautiful ones for tools they'd probably lose in a hunt. I'm sorry for being negitive, but I'm not really being negitive. Just trying to understand and figure things out. HH!

[jbl04410]

Hey TDR,I'm with Fossis on this one.Are these rocks heavy or porous?I would guess that the way they are designed with the holes always at the top they were weights for some type of fishing lines.I have never heard of a cache of pendants.But I can envision a strand of line with numerous weights.Do you find any other rocks with holes that are centered or are way larger than the ones you show.I would think that just the similarities of rock size and hole size as well as the consistent hole placement make their natural characteristics doubtful to me.Aw heck I guess what I'm trying to say is did you pick these things out of a pile of likewise stone or were they found randomly walking or digging?From what I have seen pendants are very rare where ever you are.But weights arent.
JAY