Unusual Clay

[BurntBear]

I'm hoping that someone may be able to explain how clay does this, lol. We've been working on the driveway, drainage & general construction and excavating around the house and everything is clay here. This strange "marbleized" effect keeps showing up. Any thoughts?

 

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[Buckshotnc]

The white material almost looks like feldspar from the pictures.

 

[hvacker]

River bottom?

 

[BurntBear]

Not Feldspars. These are all different colors of clay. We're situated on top of the mountain. -Luke

 

[Eu_citzen]

White clay can come from weathered feldspar. I think that's what was meant.
The red is probably stained from iron-minerals giving it that colour. Can't say for sure about the yellow, though.

Has this area once been under water?

 

[Darrow]

Alkaline soil

 

[DDancer]

I've seen that type of clay several times in various areas of Georgia. Poked around in it a bit as well but never found anything of interest~ small quartz pebbles, bits of fine hard granite, chalk nodules and some iron concretions. My ideas on the variance of the clay more or less come from observing that in the disturbed areas where tree roots, often only bits remained, showed up the reds were more concentrated. My guess is that the minerals collected by plant roots lead to concentrations of iron and other minerals in those areas staining the clay. In places where that type of clay showed up and was cut by water/erosion the coloring of the clay was more concentrated towards the top of the hill and much less so deeper. Some areas where stratified as well. Clays a funny thing~ I kept hoping to find larger bits of the granite or some calcite minerals.

 

[BurntBear]

Thanks for the responses everyone. I believe this area was under water at some point.

DDancer, that clay in Georgia sounds just like this stuff. Nothing of interest in the clay, just a bunch of Quartzite. It changes rapidly though. I'm almost at the top of our mountain, just a few hundred feet from the top. At the top of the mountain I can find massive Chalcedony everywhere. I thought the clay marbling was interesting though. -Luke

 

[unclemac]

the funny thing about different shades of clay is that they all often fire the same color. I have had greens, and reds, and tans and whites all fire out as brick pink.

 

[G Freeman]

Here in Va where I been digging I have run into dark blue clay like mud. Pulled this blue mud clay from bottom of a pond digging with a backhoe. Has a few rocks in it and most of them are white. Ran into it about 8 feet down.

 

[Buckshotnc]

White clay can come from weathered feldspar. I think that's what was meant.
The red is probably stained from iron-minerals giving it that colour. Can't say for sure about the yellow, though.

Has this area once been under water?

In looking for rubies in a small stream I've shoveled thru layers of red clay, grey clay, and white clay which looked like white caulking all within a few few from each other in depth. I assumed the white clay was decomposed feldspar.

 

[MrLee]

Here in Va where I been digging I have run into dark blue clay like mud. Pulled this blue mud clay from bottom of a pond digging with a backhoe. Has a few rocks in it and most of them are white. Ran into it about 8 feet down.

G, there is a thread about blue clay on Tnet. Some guy was mining it for the silver content and selling the clay to cruise lines, etc for it's salons of I remember correctly.