Possible fire base rock

[jamus peek]

I know mother nature can do this but compelling none the less. This rock sits flat and has a hole that looks worked one way or another. View attachment 1327113


View attachment 1327112

 

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[Indian Steve]

It is too big to be a bow drill handhold. I would call it a nutting stone. If you hold a nut between your thumb and finger and try to crack it with a hammerstone, you will have very sore fingers and very few cracked nuts. Set your nut in the dimpled rock, smack with hammerstone, happy fingers and lots of cracked nuts.

 

[The Grim Reaper]

The problem with that theory on the particular stone is that when setting flat like in the first picture the hole is on the side so kind of hard to keep the nut in there. Personally, I don't believe that was the purpose of these types of stones. Why would you need the divot when just placing a nut on a flat surface and hitting it with anything would suffice in getting it broken open.

Without seeing better pics of the hole to see if it was pecked into the stone it is hard to say if it's a Pitted Stone or an Omarulluk and natural.

 

[monsterrack]

It is real hard to say without having it in hand, but like grim said a nutting stone always sits flat and I am with him also on them being used for other things.

 

[redbeardrelics]

From what I can see from the photos, it does look like that divot could be man made rather than natural. For general discussion purposes I have nothing against calling these type items "nutting stones", but agree with the other posters that most of them probably had other uses as their main functions. It makes sense that it would not be necessary to have a dimpled rock to efficiently crack nuts on, and I think you could crack years worth of thick hickory nuts before you would create a dimple like that in a stone, just from the action of cracking the nut. The most likely theory I have heard for these artifacts is that they are anvils for bipolar reduction of small cobble stones.