Rare Finds in Central Texas - Carved Rock and Clay Bead or Pipe?

[littlemoon]

Found this website and was excited to see a place to post artifacts etc for others to comment. Here are two items that I have found in the past few years in the Central Texas area. The large rock with the incised criss-cross lines is about 9" l x 7" w x 2.5" d. Lots of use and wear to all sides. Lines look similar to an incised artifact found at the Gault Site here in Texas. This one was found on a friends farm in Elgin along with many fine archaic and a few paleo points (all in one afternoon). They kept most of the points I found but I got to keep the rock. Looking forward to going back soon.

The bird bead or pipe is made of clay and has the tip of his beak broken. Found on the banks of a big spring fed creek just on the edge of Austin after a very heavy rain storm. Couldn't believe my eyes when I first saw it lying there on the bank in the mud. Had an archeologists take a look at it (friend of a friend) via email and he said it was rare to find one and believed it is a bead since the hole goes through the body and has no pipe bowl. Measures right at 2" long and stands about 1.5" high. Big bead! Thought to be from Mississippian or pre-Columbian culture.

Any thoughts on these items? I have a lot more oddities and some nice paleo pieces to post when I have time.
Thanks for such a great site. I have hunted rocks all my life. Love fossils, artifacts, minerals and metal detecting.

Becky

 

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[johnger1]

It's hard to tell from the photos but do the lines have any kind of pattern or they random? Oh and nice bead.

 

[littlemoon]

More pics of incised rock

It's hard to tell from the photos but do the lines have any kind of pattern or they random? Oh and nice bead.

Yes there is a pattern. The lines are parallel and separated with a horizontal cross member. There are three or four sections. Each section has the one main stalk (for lack of a better term) and branches forking off of it like a tree. The ends of the branches are crossed. Kind of like the image of an arrow on caves found in the past. Not sure I can describe this so I will just add more photos to see if it helps. I also put a pic of the side and of the back side just for more reference.

 

[johnger1]

I'm sure you already ruled this out, but could some kind of farm equipment have made marks. I found a few hundred rocks that have unusual marking on them, in california, and have been told that its from erosion. What you have is different than what I'm seeing. Sorry, I thought that maybe they were the same. If I come across anything helpful, I'll pass it on.John

 

[quito]

Can you look at the lines with a scope? It's pretty easy to tell with good magnification if lines like those are incised or just an implement strike. Nice finds for sure!!

 

[johnger1]

With good magnification what would distinguish one from the other?

 

[darkmatter1977]

little moon have you found out anything about your rocks you posted? I am from southern
Illinois and I have found some that are very similar to yours

 

[willjo]

Little moons last activity was June 10, 2013 so she most likely won't answer, it would be interesting to know though.

 

[Charl]

I did not see this thread when posted a few years ago. Hard to be sure if the lines are from usage of some sort, or incised in a portable petroglyph sense, its meaning lost. JMO, but I don't think plow scars. I suspect portable petroglyph or from ancient usage. Here's a portable petroglyph with a common cross hatch motif....

 

[rockTexas]

Sorry I didn't answer before now

little moon have you found out anything about your rocks you posted? I am from southern
Illinois and I have found some that are very similar to yours

I never found anything on the large rock with the lines. Using a jewelers loupe, the lines look like the crescent shaped chips you see along the edges of arrowheads. Not a solid line but made up of end to end chips. The more I look at it, it looks like a huge fan fossilized shell. Texas was underwater before and we find a lot of fossils that are large and small.

Question for you. I found a site that is packed (and I mean almost no dirt between) with heat treated flint tools. There are similar tools all over the site, like a bowtie shaped tool with finely tooled edges. There are many gravers that are basically a big round shape with the point coming off one edge. There are chisels, and lots of perfectly tooled cubes or elongated cubes. These have so much wear. I say wear, but I am not as familiar with heat treated tools. I have hunted my whole life and have been to many sites in Texas but I have never been to one that is chocked full of tools so thick you can't believe it. Very few flakes found. The heat treated idea came from an archaeologists who I showed photos to. The flint or chert pieces feel greasy when you pull them out of the dirt. Polished all over and those with a cutting edge are very sharp. My grandson was with me one day, and asked me how to look for things at this site. I told him to turn over rocks, get up under bushes and places where people don't appear to have disturbed. First rock he turned over was an obsidian flake arrowhead, somewhat crude but usable. He holds it up and says "like this" as the sunlight shown through the stone. Light came through almost the entire piece. Is there obsidian close to central Texas? Not another piece of obsidian anywhere. I have never found a piece of obsidian on a site in texas. i have some great hematite manos which are black.

the site where the heat treated tools are is one of a dozen sites that were found in the 1930s (i found a short reference to test digs online). Only 2 of the sites had test holes and contents noted. The rest were never tested. I used to drive for over an hour to get to a good spot and then I moved to a subdivision and nobody realizes the houses are all sitting on top of this site. I can fill up a backpack in less than an hour with tools from this site (and that is leaving many behind and only taking the most used or tooled ones home.) My kids groan every time they see my boxes of indian rocks. I think the site may be paleo based on the way the tools are made.

I will check back more often. I have some new finds from the site i can post for you to see.

 

[J-ROB]

Read this on obsidian re:Central Texas. https://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/graham/glass.html

Obsidian can go a very long way via trade routes. When I was studying TX archaeology at UT about 15 years ago, researchers were doing a lot of chemical analysis to trace obsidian origins. It is not from CenTex, that's fairly certain but I have heard of obsidian items found in the area.

 

[uniface]

Looking forward to that. For sure !