Well this is a post for Red to be able to share his recent find and to look at others. My pieces are from different areas where I live here in N GA. I have quite a few properties I am able to look on and once in a while find a piece of Soapstone so here are mine. Also I found a quartz point today that I put on one piece. That certain piece has a drill hole on it which probably is a repair hole from ancient times. I hope others will jump in on this post and show their finds. Thanks everyone. This 2nd piece shows some drill holes as well but none go all the way through. I have others but cant find those pics. I have given some away in the past.
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SH those are cool I like the drilled hole...showing repair technique? Those pieces look lot more finished than mine...Nice little quartz point ...good find manLast edited by redrocks; 12-04-2018, 08:10 AM.SW Connecticut
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On the point I found it in the Adena field but that property use to get plowed the farmer has been working that property for 50 yrs.. Looks to be a Morrow Mountain which is much older than the Adenas I find. It was hiding in a patch of scrap cotton I just happened to notice it was a different color of white reached in and pulled it out. Going to let mother nature work on that field for a few months before I go back again. Quite sure I picked them all up for now.
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The color was different from the cotton it just looked out of place so I reached and was glad I did
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Very nice doesnt look brittle I have 1 piece that I keep in a frame due to its brittle and softer than normal. Yours looks to have a drilled spot I wonder why they drilled the bowls maybe to release some heat towards the top. I think most of these bowls were kept near a water source due to the weight of them. Probably cleaned the animals by the water then just cooked them in that same area. jmo
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My wife and I have been lucky with soapstone. Many pipe forms and blanks. A complete shallow bowl blank, worked into basic shape, pried off a ledge, but never finished. A shallow broken dish with lug, and scores of sherds.
And this thing. Better then 1/3, but less then 1/2 a bowl, by my rough estimate. I imagine it will always be one of my favorite finds, though she did the finding, I just kept telling her to go back and find more.
Very hot day in May, bout 25 years ago. No luck in a scorching field, we retired to a beach, which involved a long walk from the car. I sat on a shallow embankment topped with grass, laid back, and that was it for me. I'm done for the day, thank you.
It was a very low tide, and several dozen people, in family groups and alone, were spread out in the mud flats, clamming while the tide was out. My wife wandered off into the edge of the mud flats and came back with a soapstone piece with the lug end. "What's this?", she asks. "That's a soapstone bowl", I said. "Go find the rest of it". Just like that, as if that was an easy thing to do, and no, don't expect any help from me. I'm done, remember, lol. Shortly after, she brings a second piece, which I promptly snapped into place. "By God, you're getting there!" By the time she brought a third piece over, I finally got up, walked over, just in time to see her find a fourth and fifth piece.
And that's all she wrote. But, although it had fallen apart, it was plain to see an ancient hearth lay exposed in, and at the edge of the flats. Very cool thing to see. While scores of people clammed around us, we were looking at a place perhaps ancient peoples had enjoyed a clambake centuries earlier. We returned the next day and dug in and around the exposed hearth, but found no further pieces.
A couple of things to note. Body rot. This is what happens when steatite containing iron impurities resides in a marine environment for centuries. And the blackness of the bottom, and lug. From cooking in a fire I imagine. The larger section consists of three pieces which I glued together, and a piece of the opposite rim. A smaller piece of the bowl bottom also could not be reattached.
Lopsided lug:
Blakened lug and bottom:
These bowls were almost always more elongated, seldom round, so here is an estimate of where the opposite rim piece found would be located:
Rhode Island
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Wow Charlie that story bout your wife finding 5 pieces is awesome. ..I guess you guys did real well with soapstone alright! That came out good the way you glued it together. Man that bottom and lug is really blackened ....I can see a lot of lines from the tools used to shape it .. Nice good post and examples CharlieLast edited by redrocks; 12-04-2018, 06:09 PM.
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Thanks, Red. I still get a kick remembering how blasé I was over what was a pretty exciting, and rare, event. She was finding it only about 20 feet to my right, but I was too beat to get up and help, lol. Yeah, it came out OK, Elmer's glue, still holding after all these years!
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Great story Charlie and very nice find to. I like the handle on it.
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Here's an outcrop in Rhode Island where you can still see the attached bowl forms:
And here's a blank or form of a shallow bowl I found in a field years ago....
Rhode Island
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I was told by a collector from SE Ct., who hunted this farm, that a great many soapstone bowls were found there. This one is made of an extremely high grade of steatite. It has several areas of inscribed lines on the exterior, the zig-zag lines being a classic design element:
And here's a little guy, from North Carolina:
Rhode Island
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