Indian pounding rock?

[Drylandfish]

Hi,

First post. Wonderful forum you have here.

The other day I found a non-native (quartz possibly) smooth rounded stone that had obviously been used for pounding something (nuts? corn?). I found it in a small, dry creek in the middle of the woods (east KY). One end is blackened (from smashing walnuts maybe?). I feel sure it's an indian artifact of some sort. I have no idea what something like this is called to look it up. Any ideas?

Thanks.

I'm going to make a stab at attaching 2 photos.

 

[Jonnyreb]

Welcome to the board first off.
Yeah, I would say its probably a tool of some sort. It does appear to have some signs of battering on the one end. Whether or not for smashing walnuts, I dont really know. I'm more inclined to think it could have been used to strike slivers from a core of flint, edge preperation, etc.

 

[Pinellas Man]

Welcome to the forum! I have a quartz stone very similar to your find.

 

[Drylandfish]

Thanks for the welcome!

I hadn't thought of it maybe being a tool-making implement. I found a stone of the same composition in our garden several years back. It was perfectly oval and the size and shape of a flat grapefruit. I should have said, this stone is about the size of a very large pear.

Thanks for the replies.

 

[Ohio_Doug]

Looks like a hammer stone to me, definetly shows the signs!

 

[gilmerman]

Welcome to the forum. You'll be treated nice by most of the people in this forum. They have lots of knowledge and experience with artifacts, listen to them and they will usually get you the Right answer. remember to always be looking down as you take walks examine everything that looks odd or out of place. Soon you'll be sharing your finds. Check in every day if you can.

 

[*Molly*]

Welcome to our forum !!!
I'm unsure about your stone, I'm strickly a pointy rock lover.

Molly.

 

[Drylandfish]

Thanks again for all the welcomes!

I know what you mean about looking for things out of place. I found the stone while out picking spicebush berries (not many this year on account of the drought). I happened to glance in the dry creek and see this unusually smooth stone. All we commonly have here are sandstone and limestone and they're pretty irregular looking.

I know this is not the forum for this, but I just this evening found a very old-looking broad axe head (metallic) in the very same creek! This is miles from roads or houses. You can be sure I'm going to investigate further.

Since I'm on this kick again I dug out some of our pointier finds from when fields have been tilled. I know positively nothing about them, other than I like finding them. All I can say, is that native peoples in these parts must've been very frugal with their flint (none occurs here that I've ever seen) . I've hardly ever found an arrowhead that's not chipped or broken in some way.

 

[Ohio_Doug]

You have some nice pieces there, thanks for sharing!

 

[gilmerman]

Really good start, keep us informed on what you find.

 

[Shemanese]

Nice Potato..Seems some tools kinda look like potatos. Hammerstones, Some Pestles. The big blade is nice. Too bad it's got some nicks. Really nice anyways. You got some nice stuff.

 

[Jonnyreb]

Great material your finding up your way. Love the big blade of course, but those are some really nice end scrapers too. The side notched one is a Big Sandy!! Nice batch of flint

 

[Drylandfish]

Thanks!

That the one would be called a Big Sandy is appropriate. The Big Sandy River is only about 40 miles from here.