Does anybody know what this is?

[wirelessworldinc]

Pinkish color, very smooth, very heavy for size. Maybe petrified Dinosaur egg? HaHa Just kidding. Mary ann

 

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[River Rat]

Have no clue, but it does look like a petrified egg.

RR

 

[wirelessworldinc]

I was half a$$ kidding when I said petrified egg. It has veins running through it and it does look like an egg. Mary ann

 

[Neanderthal]

It's a quartzite cobble. You will find them on or off sites,etc. We find them on sites here, yet aren't indigenous to the area, which makes me believe that at least some of them did serve a useful purpose. Perhaps as cooking stones, pottery tools, game pieces, etc. Who knows. The ones I have seen show really no heavy useage or modification, so they most likely weren't used in a harsh fashion. However, you will find hammerstones made of quartzite occasionally...they work great!

 

[grrbrts]

I am not certain, but I have found cobbles of chert/quartzite with the likeness of this within the creeks about here, that have been worked, so to speak.

 

[lostcauses]

Agree with the quartz. It shows to be iron stained due to laying in water.

 

[wirelessworldinc]

Thank you for all your answers, at least I know what it is now. Mary ann

 

[Cannonman17]

I agree with Matt. I have a very strong suspicion that in at least some circumstances they were used as cooking stones because in two different sites I located small caches of them with a few being fire cracked and all were in a small area with pottery and charcoal. I'm sure they could have been used to burnish ceramics also-

 

[bean man]

That's cool Mary Ann. Here's my quartzite cobble.

 

[X_relics]

This stone is most likely from a Shamens pouch. Most of the time these stones are associated with the woodland/mississippian era. I've found a few of these stones near what it believed to be a Mississppian era mound. Most of the stones are non-native to the area also. It is believed that these stones were used for ritual purposes. Some believe these were also healing stones.

 

[Billco]

Those rocks are not native to my area, but I find them on every Indian site that I have found. The colors range from pink to dark brown. All sizes. I find them whole with pits on the ends. Whole with little wear. Busted fairly neatly in half. Jaggedly busted, probably used as a chopping tool. I saw a display of an Indian village in a Birmingham museum and these rocks were there, being used in making pottery (like mentioned earlier).

These are some very tough rocks. Plus, we don't have native round rocks here, even in the creeks. I can sees why prehistoric Indians would have used them for a pile of things.

Here is what one looks like broken open and worked down to a tool. I found this in the midst of many other finished artifacts and debitage.

 

[Hugh Mongus]

I believe those nice smooth cobbles are the product of glacial action. I find them here at the fall line in NC and know they are found in association with glacial movements. That is not to say that the ancients did not pick them up as we do for a "pretty" and certainly for uses we cannot even contemplate. The ancients were of course, well schooled in "STONE AGE." Hugh

 

[lostlake88]

Hello,

I am from Ohio and see these types of stones all the time. I would guess it is the product of glaciation (if found away from a creek or river) or it is just a water worn rose quartz stone (if found in or around the water). It is a beautiful stone. Can you imagine your counter tops made of that stuff? How cool would that be.

 

[Snowdragon]

Looks kinda like a darning egg to me.

 

[Cannonman17]

Smooth stones are actually more often a product of rivers and streams that glaciation... even when they are found in glacial deposits like the terminal moraine just a couple miles from my house they are still the product of running water and not the glacier itself. I'm very lucky to live in an area that was just on the outside edge of the Green Bay lobe of the last glaciation so I've got to study many of the formations and what not first hand- including the huge hills, or moraines, that were pushed up along the leading/lateral edges as well as some eskers farther to the east and tons of different glacial till and/or drift deposits. I can tell you that polished round rocks are not the norm in those deposits except in some areas of the outflow area when the glacier melted and drained...taking the glacial till and polishing it in the meltwater streams of the day. One last thing.. somebody mentioned something to the effect that they have those but there's no water there so it must not be from that.. or something like that... you would be surprised at all the places there has been water at one time or another, what's high and dry now may not have been twenty thousand or five hundred thousand years ago, in essence, unless your an expert on your local geology and topography there's no way for you to really know where you might find water worn rocks like this or glacial till deposits. Sorry for rambling on!