My Smithsonian Rocks and Minerals Handbook that I just purchased at the gold show, says chalcedony is a microcrystalline variety of quartz, which includes jasper and agate. Chalcedony can also be a dehydration form of opal. By comparing photographs of the artifact and the picture in the book, I agree with twitch and reaper, it sure looks like chalcedony to me. I've been told that if you really don't know what it is, call it "chert," and the book says chert and flint are in the same family of sedimentary rocks. Quartz and chalcedony are oxides, and the milk quartz doesn't have the opal like sheen this point has, so I'm thinking it's a really neat if not head scratching, opaque white chalcedony biface with a waxy luster. Sometime in my fog shrouded past I recollect being told that really hard rocks like jasper and chert were many times heat treated before being knapped, and going along with that I was told you could tell a heat treated, annealed artifact will have a waxy sheen to it. That's not in my book, so take it for what it's worth. You have an interesting find, and welcome aboard T Net.
I would like to know what this is, how old is it and what is the rock it is made from. Your help would be greatly appreciated.
