Stone tool cache assemblages/ Usage help

[Lindenmeier-Man]

Congrats on the nutting stone artifacts ! I can’t imagine eating acorns though .. I use to hunt deer and gathered red and white oak acorns to throw out for the white tails . They loved em so I tried to eat one once . YUK !

[Lindenmeier-Man]

TY for the info of how to....Think I’ll just bake a spud !

[Cecilia]

LinnyMan, I tasted acorn once upon a time. Bleehck!! Could not spit that bitter taste away. Unless our tastebuds changed drastically, acorns never on-the-go pocket snax ! Funny you did that. I usta taste everything gave Horse, including de-wormer.

[Lindenmeier-Man]

You tinkle me Cissy !

[sailorjoe]

Hi Sgt. Wow!! You've found the motherlode of nutting stones. That is absolutely amazing and you are digging a site never before excavated. I've found several nutting stones but all were surface finds at field sites. I always thought as well as did my fellow hunters back in the day that they were used as anvil stones for nuts and acorns. I never heard as Ron suggested the possibility of being used as hammerstones. Regarding the rocks/boulders fallen from the ceiling. I will almost guarantee that if you were able to move them and dig under them that you will find points much older than the ones you are now finding. In fact, if there is a relatively large and level area in front of the shelter you will likely find artifacts there and some of them very old. The reason being is that these bluff side rock shelters erode and break downfrom the top edge thus continually reducing the inside area and what now is open to the sky was 5 or 10,000 years ago a sheltered area. I was once involved in a professionally supervised excavation at a site where the inside had been excavated long ago that once we got pretty deep we found really old points like Big Sandy, Jude, etc that are 8 to 10000 years old. I mean pretty deep by depths of 3 to 4 feet of soil had built up over them. And we were excavating 4x4 ft. squares, 6 inches at a time using trowels. Doing it that way, one rarely ever needs a sifting screen. It is very tedious and takes a long time but there were several people at work.

[Ron Kelley]

Hey Joe, I may have not been as clear as I could have been. Most of the pitted stones pictured in this thread are most likely anvil stones. However many hammerstones used for flintknapping also have pecked pitted spots for finger holds. The hammerstones can be separated from the anvil stones by observing the use wear.

[SGT.Digger]

I believe the top 4” of soil has been hand dug or disturbed years ago maybe not everywhere in certain areas but everything past that is intact . When they hit the hearth rock that looks like it stopped them. They did not sift it either from what I can tell . This site is lacking imop of bird points we’ve found about 10 broken ones only 2 almost complete . There’s one area that I can go behind to reach the original floor but have yet to do that , maybe in another lifetime

[sailorjoe]

Ron. Ok and thanks for the heads up. @Sgt. Well, if you don't get under the big rocks then maybe they will rest there another 5 or 10,000 years. Just think about all the Big Sandys and Daltons you may not get. It would keep me from sleeping well at night if I thought I was missing out on those. LOL IMO, a Dalton or Big Sandy is worth 50 Woodland period triangles.In my old collection I had about 125 of those compared to 15 Daltons. Your well documented dig is very interesting.I continue to look forward to what you uncover.

[Tam]

I have been flowing this blog/ site thread the entire time . As you can tell like Jethro said there is just so many tools and I know points and bones ; all the fire pits . It certainly was a home for thousands of years to many just a wonderful shelter from raw elements.

[SurfaceHunter]

Interesting post I enjoyed reading it. Lots of pitted stones in your shelter looking forward to seeing what else you find.