sweet find!

[vegalyrae]

So, yea, hi everyone! first off i guess i should introduce myself.

My name is brooke and i'm from south shore ky, right smack in the middle of the Shawnee main territory.

every spring we scour the fields in the flood plains of the scioto and ohio rivers meet looking for anything we can find that the plows unearthed. well...today during a nice brisk fall walk i would something i have never seen before.

the end is rounded with 7-8 ribs carved in the middle, then ending in a perfectly cylindrical blunted end. the whole thing weighs 2.3 lbs and is nearly 5 inches in length. my first thought was a tool of some sort but it appears to be made of some sort of fossil stone. we have an axe we found earlier in the year that is about the same size but this thing is by bar the coolest thing we've found yet....even though we have no clue what it is lol! what do you guys think?

 

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[natchitoches]

very nice. never seen anything like it
welcome to tnet

 

[rock]

Welcome, It needs some water and a brush and then a new pic. and more than 1 pic of it. Front, back, top and bottom.

 

[vegalyrae]

actually it has been thoroughly scrubbed quite harshly i might add. it appears to be made from some sort of fossil rock...we have quite a bit of that around these parts, usually we go out diggin for fossils of brachiopods and corals and such and this little baby was just barely poking it's little head out. i have tried and tried to figure out what on earth it is but to no luck

 

[GatorBoy]

I know the lines look very symmetrical and handcrafted but are you sure it's not just a fossil? I mean have you tried to find something in the fossil record to explain it? It kind of reminds me of a cast of the interior of some kind of spiral shell.

 

[vegalyrae]

actually yes we have....we also took it to our local university's geology dept and they pointed us into the native american artifact direction as they have nothing in their database that would support such an item. it was their belief that it is something carved out of fossil rock (that used to be part of a seabed that covered out area from around 320-360 million years ago during the Mississippian period.) They suspect something shawnee as that was the tribe in these parts (i am only about 30 minutes from serpant mound)

 

[GatorBoy]

I know this one is flat but my point is that type of calcite material usually forms inside sea shells. this one still has part of the bi-valve Shell attached. see the type of material. I'm not discounting the University But I went to one and got stuff wrong too. I found that one near a mound too. But that was just coincidence.

 

[rock]

Looks like they tried to make a Plummet out of it.

 

[GatorBoy]

Stoppit Rock..LOL.

 

[vegalyrae]

the only problem with the spiral shell theory is that the ribs do not form a spiral of any kind and are evenly spaced nor does it fit the shape of any known fossils from that time period i'll try to get a few more pictures from other angles so you guys can have a better idea of the whole piece

 

[GatorBoy]

Cool thanks.. I'm curious too. I'm trying really hard to see any signs of grinding that would have made those grooves.. but I don't see any. I may not know what it is but my opinion is that it is not manmade.

 

[vegalyrae]

ok here are a few different pics of it from different angles: you can see the area where the plow got it and also the cylindrical end that i was talking about much better in these pics

 

[rock]

Much bigger than I thought. Its a shame it cant clean up better than that.

 

[vegalyrae]

i'm scared to death to take my pick to it...i have a small one i use to clean up corals and mollusks we find when we fossil hunt ( that location is about 3 hours away) but this was in the middle of a farmers field in the floodplains where fossils arent found.

 

[bede2691]

Looks like just a weird rock to me. I don't make out anything that looks man-altered. What type of rock is it? I would think the bottoms of the grooves would be fairly straight not crooked as they look in many areas. Unless the grooves were straight and it is a softer rock and heavily eroded away completely beyond the original surface.

 

[vegalyrae]

given the fact that it appears to be made of fossil riddled limestone which is indeed quite soft, that is a very real possibility. it is rather banged up for sure and has a very prominent gouge from the plow, but if a straight edge such as a ruler is held up to the ridges they are actually quite straight

 

[SOHIO]

preform effigy or preform something? Does it have any apparent "pecking" ? kinda looks like it.

 

[SOHIO]

I'm thinking its had some human shaping to it.

preform platform pipe?

lets just call it a preform platform pipe and be done with it ...that way I'm right and everyone else is wrong.

anyway whatever it is its a cool keeper.

 

[SOHIO]

preform platform pipe.

they probably gave up on it and used a pop can.

 

[wells]

Does'nt look like any known artifact to me, but it doe s look like a coprolite or fossil something.