any ideas?

[Mentalfloss]

Hello everyone, I am not sure if this is anything but a rock. I found it in a hot spot with lots of flakes. I was thinking maybe some kind of paint bowl. But I don’t know, what do you think?

 

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[Kentucky Kache]

When you found it, was it turned with the bowl up or down? I've heard that Indians would hide their bowls by turning them bowl side down.

 

[Neanderthal]

When you found it, was it turned with the bowl up or down? I've heard that Indians would hide their bowls by turning them bowl side down.

They didn't hide their bowls by turning them upside down, there was a good reason for it. Almost always when you find a metate, it's turned over....they collect water & bacteria if they don't. "Mother Stones" (community milling basins) are the exception, but it would be pretty tough for them to tip a several ton rock.

This leads to yet another long post by me (I'm bored, don't read any further..I may work this into a rant). First, let me state that I find metate's and manos on a regular basis. I find far too many (and I'm too lazy) to pick them up anymore. However, I do take pics of them sometimes and may share some with you in the future. Sometimes you do find them right side up and I attribute this to them (the Metate) being frequently used, too much to necessitate turning them upside down or storing them. You will hear alot of people saying that the aboriginals would break these intentionally (so nobody else could use them) due to a large majority of them being split and broken up. I've studied a ton of "split" metates and have yet to see one that shows signs of forced intentional breakage. However, I do know for a fact that many of them have broken due to weather conditions. When our local lake dropped fast last time, I noticed several broken metates laying out there...recent breaks. This was in winter. They were breaking because they still had moisture in them, and when freezing at night..they would bust apart. Cracked just like truck engine did last winter *groan*....ok, so I forgot anti-freeze. I actually have pics of several of these cracked up winter metates somewhere.

Ok, this reminds me of a story I was going to go into about shell hoes...I'll have to save that for another time.

Matt

P.S. - I forgot to comment on your paint stone. I can't tell a whole awful lot by the pic, but I can't see anything about it that would make me assume that it is one. It looks like a stone that contained (this happens in nature) something in that concavity that stained it, or it could have been an earlier surface of the rock and didn't go through the same modification as the rest (breakage). For the record, 95%+ of all of the proposed "paint pots" that you will see advertised as such....aren't.

 

[luckyinkentucky]

It almost looks like a raw chunk of Obsidian to me.

 

[Mentalfloss]

i found it in tx. the rock is about the size of my hand.

 

[Neanderthal]

i found it in tx. the rock is about the size of my hand.

In that case, I may suggest that it could be a edwards / georgetown "tab". Is the nice dark coloration the chert on the inside? The white being the rind.

 

[tomclark]

I agree, a worked piece of chert or flint that has the white rind, looks like could still be a preform or exhausted core. Especially if found with lots of chips of the center material.