Banded slate

mainejman · Jan 19, 2017

I have found e few artifacts made of banded slate here in Maine.One was a piece of slate bayonet and at another site a full channeled gouge.Archaeologist Bruce Bourque has stated he believed the source to be around the great lakes..I have other non banded slate that is believed to have originated here in Maine...My question is does anybody else have any banded slate from the great lakes area...thanks...mjm

quito · Jan 19, 2017

mainejman said:
I have found e few artifacts made of banded slate here in Maine.One was a piece of slate bayonet and at another site a full channeled gouge.Archaeologist Bruce Bourque has stated he believed the source to be around the great lakes..I have other non banded slate that is believed to have originated here in Maine...My question is does anybody else have any banded slate from the great lakes area...thanks...mjm

Charl, I been wondering the distribution of this material myself lately. A few years ago I picked up a piece of it here in SE South Dakota while artifact hunting.

It wasn't an artifact or very big so it just hung around for a few years until it was recently put into our new rock tumbler. Anyway, while I am not great lakes region it has been found here.

joshuaream · Jan 19, 2017

Banded slate is thought to have been gouged out of the earth somewhere in the great lakes area, and carried by glaciers down to be deposited south of the great lakes. It's pretty easy to find decent chunks in Northern Indiana & Northern Ohio, especially in areas where there is a lot of glacial till (rocks deposited by the glaciers.) It's soft, so it got chewed up pretty quickly and pieces get smaller the further south you go.

There are some quarries in Michigan with a type of banded slate, but it's not quite the same as the stuff the ancient people use.