My Quarry Site And Spalling Tool

[monsterrack]

A lot of folks wonder about flakes, why are there so many, were they all tools. These are photos of the site that we mine for stone , it is an old Indian quarry site that we found in Arkansas. Look at all the debris around as we knapp and that is just two people spalling. Native Americans used hammer stones to spall, I use a small iron hammer, it does not wear out, just your arm. You can clearly see with all the flakes laying around there is no shortage of cutting blades, but you will not find secondary flaking on any of them, there would be no use to flake an edge on to a razor blade. Just thought some would like to see what a real quarry site looked like.View attachment 917143View attachment 917144View attachment 917145View attachment 917146View attachment 917147We think it would take a group of 10 to 12 men 2 weeks to dig and spall, just to come up with 400lbs of stone, we get 1 1/2 to 2 tons in three days, of spalled stone. We still find hammer stones every time we remove over burden, but in 30yrs we have never found a point are any other tool around the quarry site, off the mountain we find all types of artifacts and that is just odd to me. JMO I think they camped near to the streams in the lower land and the men and the slaves went back to the quarry every day to work. You can still see the black marks where they built fires in the quarry site to crack the rock so they could pull it out.

 

[painterx7]

Very interesting rack great pics and great read ...I will get pictures from a site I know of witch it a little different because of my different area and it is now overgrown . It appears to me that they would camp always near water and the quarry was dug directly into the hill sides near bye . The funny thing is is that they could get the chert or flint right out of the streams . Are streams are loaded with full untouched hunks of nodules .

 

[monsterrack]

Very interesting rack great pics and great read ...I will get pictures from a site I know of witch it a little different because of my different area and it is now overgrown . It appears to me that they would camp always near water and the quarry was dug directly into the hill sides near bye . The funny thing is is that they could get the chert or flint right out of the streams . Are streams are loaded with full untouched hunks of nodules .

The same goes for in Arkansas so we thought but any rock above the ground will have freeze cracks and when you heat it or knapp it the small hair line cracks make your stone fall apart.

 

[painterx7]

I guess from what I've gathered the points and tools I find in streams are bank wash outs . You can tell the fresh ones they are pretty shiny the ones that have been rolling around for a while have a sanded dulling appearance like they have been sand blasted . Does that sound like what you have encountered ?

 

[monsterrack]

Some do , most points that I find that's been in the creek long have a smooth feel to them, the edges are not sharp, the creek treats them almost like a rock tumbler.

 

[outlawatheart]

good post MR... interesting