Schist Materials in NC

[NC_Stone_Collector]

I went to a new spot where I ride 4wheelers today. I have been seeing a lot of broken, patinated schist pieces eroded out of the trail. Ended up finding more than I expected. Most of the pieces were too broken or weathered to see actual good worked edges. I found most of them in the trail and the dark colored one I found in the creek. I just stuck my hands in the water to rinse the dirt off and picked that one right up. All the materials I think is schist/ garnet-schist. These schist materials are new to my collection. I've never seen any examples of schist from NC. Any one have ideas on what kind of age or could supply me with some more info about these finds? I would really appreciate it!

[CliffJ]

Those look to be quartzite rocks.

[NC_Stone_Collector]

Schist does have a quartz ingredient.  Quartz, feldspar, mica are the predominant minerals.  There is a couple of varieties of schist that can be worked and used; most occurs in sheet-like forms also.  Looks like it was made according to the properties that schist have.  Schist materials can be flaked and/or slabbed off; it often has grains of garnets also.  I'm just speculating but if I lived in ancient times and didn't have flint/chert/rhyolite readily available I would resort to another source of material. Perhaps even finding stones that Mother Nature made already that looks like a weapon or a tool suited the use of your desire. I have a homemade tomahawk w/ handle. The stone I found may or may not have been an artifact, but it works for the weapon I desired to create. It looks really cool anyway.  I went back to the same spot today and found three more forms a few inches under ground.  One looks like a weathered Guilford, another a schist blade, and the other looks like an unfinished form.  Some pieces I found looks like they were worked on for fun or to learn the material fracture properties.  All having the very apparent wear that NC artifacts have in age too.  I guess I have stumbled upon an Archaic age settlement nearby.  Hopefully, I can work my way around this ridge-side to find some fresher pieces.

[Hoss]

Just my honest opinion here but that material appears to be too soft for tool stone. Just having feldspar and mica in the matirx  would make it break down rapidly while trying to work with it.
I can't really see the garnets either. Are you talking about the flecks in the third and fourth picture?
Keep looking there has to be some good quartz , quartzite or Rhyolite in your area.

[NC_Stone_Collector]

There is but it's a lil harder to find.  I just stumbled across these forms and they are not the same as the other rocks either.  I tested the strength of course.  They are really harder than they look.  That one your talking about is definitely garnet schist.  There is garnets metamorphosed in the parent rock.  There is breakage planes that show that rock was flaked a certain way according to it's properties but it was formed into the shape of a knife?  Most of the rocks in the area have very apparent fractures due to weathering and erosion.  These I selected, I can't figure out why a natural process would change it into the form it is in today.  Which then makes me think they were used as a tool for what work they desired to do.  I showed them to another NC collector and he agrees that I made some finds, but they are very poor quality.  We talked and speculated that some of the ones I found were preforms or were worked on for fun.  Or they might have possible worked on these to test the fracture properties for their selves.  So like you said about these materials, that they may break down rapidly while working.  We believe they were testing these properties in time when the more better quality materials were limited.

[Butch Wilson]

I don't think you are going to find very much info ! I can't see where they were worked as tools ! They appear to me to be rocks not tools! Sorry!

[painshill]

I think I may have covered this before, but there is really no such rock as “schist”. Rocks referred to as schists are medium-grade metamorphorphic rocks formed at relatively high temperature and can be derived from clay or mud (most common), but also from fine grained igneous rocks such as basalts and tuffs. What distinguishes them is that the mineral grains are “platy” and elongated, such that the rock is foliated in sheets or layers (sometimes undulating) which can be readily split off along the planes in which the minerals lie. Any rock formed that way which has more than half its mineral content as elongated grains is a schist.
Typical minerals would be micas, chlorite, talc, hornblende, graphite (but many others too) and those are often finely interleaved with quartz and feldspar. The quartz grains are also sometimes elongated. Inclusions of exotic minerals such as garnet, tourmaline and glaucophane are also common.
It’s always a tough call identifying rocks from pictures, I don’t believe those are schists I’m afraid. Although I can see a few elongated phenocrysts in some of the samples, there’s nothing like 50% mineral elongation and the matrix doesn’t have that classic foliated texture. I also doubt that those inclusions are garnets.
I’m with Cliff, Hoss and Butch… I’m not seeing any intentional shaping – whether as preforms or artefacts. Just some breakage along natural cleavage planes.

[NC_Stone_Collector]

There is a soft form and a hard form.  One has more quartz, both types I see here.  However, that doesn't matter b/c I will be proving yall wrong just like the TreasureNet guys.  There is one guy on there that agrees with me on these finds.  I told him to just sit and watch this story unfold.  You may have more knowledge than me on these specific materials, but what explains a better quality arrowhead found here?  I found this Kirk today just up the hill about 50 yards.  I used a piece of broken quartz to scrape the ground.  I'm not the regular artifact hunter, searching plowed fields. It does yield more artifacts though, but I prefer to try different techniques to mix things up a bit. I'm speculating that these fresher pieces were left in a field in a position where they didn't make it to the bottom of the hill. There is pine woods there now.  I'm glad I had today off work to do some surface digging b/c I think this will put an end to this chapter.  Just my opinion, but there is apparently been a flow of inhabitants here some time or the other.

[NC_Stone_Collector]

Here's two more unusual forms I found today.  How come most things in this spot have shapes like handles and tips?  Here is the pile I left laying on the ground.  Some do look natural I know, but what would explain finding these rock here and no where else on this land or creek?  I've searched it for 5 years and I'm try to learn more this landscape.  I've found a black rhyolite Kirk today, a Morrow Mtn made of speckled rhyolite and a black rhyolite Hardaway: they're the better materials I found on this land so far.

[NC_Stone_Collector]

painshill wrote:

I think I may have covered this before, but there is really no such rock as “schist”. Rocks referred to as schists are medium-grade metamorphorphic rocks formed at relatively high temperature and can be derived from clay or mud (most common), but also from fine grained igneous rocks such as basalts and tuffs. What distinguishes them is that the mineral grains are “platy” and elongated, such that the rock is foliated in sheets or layers (sometimes undulating) which can be readily split off along the planes in which the minerals lie. Any rock formed that way which has more than half its mineral content as elongated grains is a schist.
Typical minerals would be micas, chlorite, talc, hornblende, graphite (but many others too) and those are often finely interleaved with quartz and feldspar. The quartz grains are also sometimes elongated. Inclusions of exotic minerals such as garnet, tourmaline and glaucophane are also common.
It’s always a tough call identifying rocks from pictures, I don’t believe those are schists I’m afraid. Although I can see a few elongated phenocrysts in some of the samples, there’s nothing like 50% mineral elongation and the matrix doesn’t have that classic foliated texture. I also doubt that those inclusions are garnets.
I’m with Cliff, Hoss and Butch… I’m not seeing any intentional shaping – whether as preforms or artefacts. Just some breakage along natural cleavage planes.

  You certainly know your mineral properties, however, those inclusions are garnets.  There is forms with more quartz and they have garnets imbedded also.  Then there is a softer form with garnets and it bears more mica minerals.  I've plucked out pieces of garnets the size of my thumbnail and then some are the size of specks.   That is the two main forms of garnet schist here.  They do appear to be broken along their natural cleavage plane to resemble a blade.  I think they knew what they were making and how to break this material anyway.  I've been finding more of them here shaped like that, so is that something that would naturally occur too?  Especially when I can't find no other examples anywhere else here.

[CliffJ]

NC_Stone_Collector wrote:

There is a soft form and a hard form.  One has more quartz, both types I see here.  However, that doesn't matter b/c I will be proving yall wrong just like the TreasureNet guys.  There is one guy on there that agrees with me on these finds.  I told him to just sit and watch this story unfold.  You may have more knowledge than me on these specific materials, but what explains a better quality arrowhead found here?  I found this Kirk today just up the hill about 50 yards.  I used a piece of broken quartz to scrape the ground.  I'm not the regular artifact hunter, searching plowed fields. It does yield more artifacts though, but I prefer to try different techniques to mix things up a bit. I'm speculating that these fresher pieces were left in a field in a position where they didn't make it to the bottom of the hill. There is pine woods there now.  I'm glad I had today off work to do some surface digging b/c I think this will put an end to this chapter.  Just my opinion, but there is apparently been a flow of inhabitants here some time or the other.

You are in Yadkin County, NC, a place with no shortage of rhyolite and quartz to be worked. They had little use for the natural rough rocks you are finding, which all appear to be worked by the natural processes over tens of thousands of years. You obviously have a site there if you are finding rhyolite projectiles. It sounds like it is on top of the hill, so look there.

[NC_Stone_Collector]

No I'm hunting in Surry County right now about 2 miles north of the Yadkin River and about 7 miles or less from Pilot Mountain.  This land is the border of Stokes and Surry about a mile away from the main road.  I walk out of the house and into the back yard and I'm in Surry County.  The terrain changes here into slightly mountainous while Yadkin (Yadkin Valley) has more valleys and river bottoms.  There is the Little Yadkin River that flows close by and it began on Sauratown Mtn.  Seems like this land was a traveled route to get to Pilot Mtn and/or Saura Mtn from the Yadkin River.  The Donnaha Village is about 5 miles south from here.

[NC_Stone_Collector]

I do live in Yadkin County though.  From what knowledge I've gathered from some older people around here, they were the ones that told me that Mother Nature made stones intended with a purpose for work.  The Yadkin River deposits materials of better quality for work and some are of worse quality but people made do with what they had at that time to find.  Some tools were probably used once and just left laying there at that spot.  Therefore, the better quality materials were valued more and they are rare for that reason.

[Bill]

That's a pretty good post Plainshill. You might also be lithics wonk like me too!
Schist around here is primarily bedrock, however some of it has metamorphosed to the extent that it might be a little knapable. The fact it has a slate like fracture property means it still would have been pretty tough to work.
It seems that only the Middle Archaic/Late Archaic folks worked it and I'll bet only when they had to. Most of the time, I'm sure, that the knapper ended up with his hard effort splitting into two ruined pieces.

[rmartin]

You are convinced these are worked pieces(tools of some sort) so my (our) opinion means nothing. I realize I hunt in an area rich in raw material and wouldn't give this stuff a second look, but I have seen some pretty nice artifacts from your area. All I see are naturally shaped rocks. That is a nice little point you found but IMO it does not substantiate any of the other natural stones you have posted. What kind of tools do you propose they were, what was their function?