Any help identifying this please

Ezatnova · Apr 23, 2020

Was digging to install a patio yesterday and hit a rock that sounded different to me and I saw white, which is really odd. Cleaned it up and it looks super strange to me and I have no clue what it is.

I am in Chester County, PA, outside of Philadelphia. I am in shale/quartz/limestone country. Karst formation area. I hit a million shiny flat gray/silver rocks all the time, but this is really different.

FYI my property was a farm property and I have found medicine bottles, glass and jar tops dating back 70+ years in the ground near where this was found. The property is also part of the woods area for a house 100 yards away from me that was used as a civil war hospital. When I first saw this coming out of the ground, I thought it was skull lol. Bones and artifacts from the war, as well as arrowheads from prior, have all been found on my property a while ago and on adjacent lots. They buried those who died in the house used as a war hospital out back, close to my lot.

Anyway, there is a chance this is man-made material to some building or device used back then. But, the lines in it look odd to me like it wasn’t concrete. I also do not understand the rounded edges all over it. Not one sharp edge anywhere on it.

Any thoughts!? Should I crack it open? Any tests I can do to see if it’s old concrete or something else?

Thanks!

DDancer · Apr 29, 2020

Not man made. I appears to be a worn down bit of limestone, a sedimentary deposit. Seen a lot of this materiel and your description of the geology there is a good pointer.

Ezatnova · Apr 30, 2020

DDancer said:
Not man made. I appears to be a worn down bit of limestone, a sedimentary deposit. Seen a lot of this materiel and your description of the geology there is a good pointer.

Thanks. Very interesting. All I can say is it’s pretty unique around my yard. All I mostly every hit is limestone and shale stuff.

Interestingly, I saw the tip of a nice looking rock that I decided to dig up and put in a garden. Well, when I started, it ended up being a big old boulder! Took two hours and my tractor to get it out. Anyway, when I was digging it out, I found 2 more tiny pieces of that same smoothed white limestone.

Thankfully, after all the efforts the garden boulder turned out to be a beauty. I wish I knew more about what it was, but it looks to me like a lot of black and white marbling and then there are areas that shine green red copper etc when wet. Then a small area of almost like garnet green.

I bought some stone sealer wet-look stuff that I may try spraying on it to see if it makes it look awesome even when it’s dry.