Please help ID these artifacts??

[GypsyLynn]

A friend took me to his creek and has been teaching me to recognize artifacts. Please, anyone can help identify these finds?

 

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[Treasure_Hunter]

It has an artifact forum with members posting.

 

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[uniface]

So then when it's convenient for them to be artifacts, they're artifacts, and on a site about artifacts. And when it's convenient for them to not be artifacts, they're not artifacts, and on a place that has no real artifacts at all.

Can't tell the players without a scorecrd.

 

[Kantuckkeean]

I had a blogspot once so I went to the dermatologist. She said that it was just an eolith and that I was pareidolia. I had her burn it off with a laser anyway.

Kindest regards,
Kantuck

 

[Charl]

1) Your portable art belief puts you at odds with mainstream European archaeology. Just so you know.

2) The link you deleted was NOT to another artifact site. It was to an individual blog analyzing the controversy over eoliths. Just so you know.

For anyone interested, google "eoliths" at "blogspot." Since this is not a link, it is not to a collector site, and since you deleted it without due diligence, I expect it will remain accessible. Otherwise you'll be censoring formation that is both relevant and valuable.

Some European archaeologists are more willing to consider objects that most of us would regard as the “products” of pareidolia to be manuports collected because they were natural images in stone. Those same archaeologists consider that some of these manuports were further altered by humans. In 2018, a Dallas, Texas art gallery created an exhibit that posited this interpretation of naturally occurring objects as the beginnings of art. This site describes that exhibit and includes several videos that promote these theories.

https://www.nashersculpturecenter.org/art/exhibitions/exhibition/id/535

 

[uniface]

Eolith vs. Artifact

 

[Garscale]

I had a blogspot once so I went to the dermatologist. She said that it was just an eolith and that I was pareidolia. I had her burn it off with a laser anyway.

Kindest regards,
Kantuck

I think I had an eolith once. Finally passed it but boy did it make my pareidolia sore.

 

[Relicgrubber]

 

[Charl]

If this is about educating ourselves and opening our eyes then here's some more information that people unfamiliar with this topic should Google:

Pareidolia (/ˌp?riˈdoʊliə/,[SUP][1][/SUP] US also /ˌp?raɪˈ-/[SUP][2][/SUP]) is the tendency for perception to impose a meaningful interpretation on a nebulous stimulus, usually visual, so that one sees an object, pattern or meaning where there is none

I thought that was self evident. The Makapansgat Pebble, for instance, has always been assumed to be an example of something completely natural that was collected because it resembled a face, and it was pareidolia, after all, that allowed that recognition in the first place. That has always been a recognized fact. It’s importance lay in the fact that it may have been collected by Australopithecus between 2.5-3 million years ago. So it raised the question of whether this early hominid was capable of symbolic thinking? It was never presented as something other than a manuport, but, here’s the point: if an Australopithecus could recognize it, how big a step before he could create the same? So, the importance lay in seeing ready made art as presaging true art. No arguing that pareidolia is involved…

https://www.pedestrian.tv/news/makapansgat-pebble-it-me/

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/first-sculpture-makapansgat-pebble-1269056

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

Here is the thing, if a rock has no signs of being touched by man, if a rock was picked up 50,000 years ago and stuck on a pedestal and worshiped there is still no signs it was ever picked up to begin with, no signs of being worked or touched, it is just a rock.

 

[uniface]

"Pareidolia" is not confined to clouds (or rocks) looking like animals. Time and again, operating in reverse, it forces archaeologists to insist that self-evident artifacts are merely "eoliths" because everything they believe about the past would be overturned by acknowledging them as obviously products of intentional human activity. As in the example shown in the Eoliths/Artifact post (which deserves much closer attention than it seems to have received). Entire lithic industries like Rick Donninger's Indiana Mousterian, to say nothing of Calico, Hueyatlaco and other sites are "invisible" to those determined not to see them.

It works both ways. And if it makes some people stupid, it makes the ones mocking them just as stupid themselves in their own denials and refuge-taking in dialectical materialism to evade problems this approach is unable to come to grips with (a fact known to them in advance).

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

It is simple, if a rock has no signs of being altered or worked by man it does not belong here.

 

[newnan man]

Found on the beach recently. Obvious effigy!

 

[Huzzah!]

I'm not seeing any artifacts in any of those pictures imo. The chipping on the edges is just chatter from bouncing around in a creek bottom imo.

Keep looking and never give up!

Grubber, I think see what you’re saying about the second to last piece but need to not look at it on my phone screen for a better look, but I dont think the photos of the last piece show signs of tumbling and my way of thinking is this: if the chips off the last piece were caused by creek tumbling I would think that all the edges of the stone would be chipped in a similar way. In addition, it looks like the chipped areas are more fresh than the patina that seems to be on the untouched edges and further lead me to think creek tumbling was not the cause of those chipped edges. Just my full thought process.

 

[Garscale]

View attachment 1936386
Found on the beach recently. Obvious effigy!

Yep. Cookie monster effigy. One of the more common types.

 

[Relicgrubber]

The abo that carved it with such precision was prolly thinking about his mate.

 

[Charl]

Here is the thing, if a rock has no signs of being touched by man, if a rock was picked up 50,000 years ago and stuck on a pedestal and worshiped there is still no signs it was ever picked up to begin with, no signs of being worked or touched, it is just a rock.

When I was still a youngster, in the late 50’s, I partook in a dig by the Narragansett Archaeological Society. The dig lasted two years. Several cremation burials were excavated. Of course that’s a no-no today, but attitudes and laws were different in the 50’s. One of the burials, in addition to tools and points, contained a dozen crystals, both quartz and amethyst. Since they were unaltered, they were not artifacts. But they were not “just rocks”. By definition, they were manuports, in obvious association with human activity. I don’t recall anyone saying “throw them aside, they’re just rocks no matter how you slice it”.


We’re entitled to our own opinion, but not our own facts. Manuports are recognizable objects, recognized by the science of archaeology. If found on the surface, of course it’s a judgement call, but every collector who knows his or her site like the back of the proverbial hand has likely found rocks they suspect are manuports, and not “just”rocks.


I have a fern fossil I surface collected from a site that had very, very few extraneous rocks. I suspected it had been collected prehistorically. But I knew I could not prove it, but only collect it, and add it to the site assemblage. Then, one day, years later, I noticed for the first time that the rock had a small, deliberate notch ground into one side. Eureka! The fossil had been collected prehistorically! My suspicion, born of intimate knowledge of that site, was correct. I would never discourage a collector for taking home suspected manuports. I’m a fossil collector. I love the fact that I found a manuport fossil collected by a prehistoric inhabitant who also collected a fossil.


But, when found in an archaeological context, of course manuports are recognized. Other than paint stones, like graphite or hematite, which are manuports that display utilization, most would indeed be “just rocks” if found on the surface of a site. Suspicious, but unprovable. But not when found in context. In that case, they are proven manuports, rocks, yes, but hardly “just rocks”.


Even today, there are shamans whose kits include crystals. The very reason crystals found in direct association with artifacts in a controlled dig are often speculated to have been a part of such kits. Or not, we cannot be certain if the pouch is not itself preserved. But ethnographic studies of shamans support the belief that in the past, shamans kits would indeed contain similar items.


It is entirely reasonable to suspect the Makapansgat Pebble is a manuport, and not “just a rock”. And, if the argument being presented is that an unaltered rock can never, ever, under any circumstances or context whatsoever, be recognized as a manuport, well, that’s a mistaken belief, it’s having one’s own facts that do not match what we know is the case from archaeological contexts.

Manuports exist. Manuports are identifiable in context, and the inference that the Makapansgat Pebble was transported by humans to a cave, and not by an animal, and not by any natural agency that would separate it from its source formation, is a reasonable inference. Yes, people can argue against it being a manuport, maybe the Australopithecus remains were brought to the cave by a predator. (But difficult to see how the predator would transport the pebble 40 kms). The inference is reasonable. Sometimes that’s all you can hope for. Declaring every possible manuport as “just a rock” is antithetical to true learning, IMHO. I want no part of such thinking.

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

I repeat, unless there are signs of being worked or used by man the rocks do not belong on this forum, there are Indian artifacts forums and sites on different websites to post them if you wish. Pareidolia rocks and portable art are not posted here.