Shaft Abrader?

[painshill]

I acquired this item during my recent trip to New England from a dealer in Newport,  RI. , who had identified it as a Neolithic “shaft abrader” (ie for smoothing arrow shafts). Those exist in African cultures just as they did for Native American ones and were also used for smoothing wooden spindles for purposes such as spinning yarn and sometimes for shaping tubular stone beads.



It’s from an artefact-rich location in The Moroccan Sahara, is made from silicified sandstone bordering on quartzite and fits neatly in the hand for such a purpose. The pairing of the grooves is unusual, but might perhaps have been an efficient way to smooth two shafts (or beads) at the same time.
As you can see from the pictures (sorry about the focus on that last one... it's not a deliberate ploy to hide anything from you... just difficult to focus on in profile) the grooves are neatly hemispherical and the interiors exhibit oriented scratch marks. Each pair of grooves is about 10mm across.
So………. my question to you is, what do you see here? Do you agree with that interpretation? I already know the answer and there is one member here who will probably also already know since he has probably seen it posted elsewhere. Perhaps he would kindly keep his powder dry while others weigh in with opinions?

[chase]

I don't know???? the striations that run through the length of the groove IMO would not make it an Abrader.  :dunno:  :dunno:  The double groove? :dunno:  :dunno:
in both places?? I will set on the side lines :crazy:  :crazy:

[CMD]

A fossil? Can't see a shaft abrader with those grooves. Was a shop in Newport selling extremely well preserved Pennsylvanian plant fossils from a secret location on the Newport Cliff Walk, but that doesn't look like our shale. Not plow scars I hope....

[sneakygroundbuzzard]

in my opinion, not a shaft abrader
the lines with in the grooves look like the surface of reeds
is it possible that it is a fossil of reeds

[painshill]

CMD wrote:

A fossil? Can't see a shaft abrader with those grooves. Was a shop in Newport selling extremely well preserved Pennsylvanian plant fossils from a secret location on the Newport Cliff Walk, but that doesn't look like our shale. Not plow scars I hope....

  I don't doubt it to be from NW Africa. He had some really nice stuff, including these very reasonably priced African trade beads (there's a re-strung mixture here from both Venice and Bohemia with a few sand-cast locals):

But then I was in Newport, so all his stuff might have been Vik....
No. Forget I even mentioned that.  :laugh:  :whistle:

[Olden]

.
It looks like a lg. rodent was sharpening his teeth on that stone Roger.

[CMD]

I had noticed what looked like impressions faintly visible elsewhere on the slab. My initial guess, although I didn't say as much, was Calimites, which is why I wondered if it had been found locally, since the shop was local. But the rock wasn't right. And it didn't really look all that right for Calamites. By now I have just come across your notation elsewhere, Roger.(member, don't post much) I would guess some type of reed, that folded at it's center vein as it lay in the sand?
Just rememberd I have something very similar I found in RI as a child. Probably will be very difficult to locate, unfortunately, but if I do, I'll post it here....

[Kyflintguy]

Come on painshill ! My brains going to Meltdown if you don't enlighten me here,  at first I thought a hand held tool that was used on a stationary piece of something harder...but the striations in the grooves are so uniform it couldn't be "scratches"caused by human interference could it? So  then following this fossil idea, just thinking out loud... this rock looks like it has took a tumbling throughout its life which leads me to wonder how the "fossil" imprints  would have survived in tact and as clean and sharp as they are... I'm stumped either way I turn pal! :dunno:

[painshill]

OK... it's not an abrader and not an artefact, despite the vendor's description. Of that I'm 100% sure, but I bought it anyway since it wasn't expensive and I thought it was a cool example of the many ways that nature tries to fool us.
I'm sure it's a plant impression but I don't know which plant. The material is typical of Nubian sandstone which occurs in the eastern Sahara and NE Africa, but it would have to have been manuported to NW Africa.
I posted it on the Fossil Forum in the hope of getting an ID but there was only one responder... who thought it might be the result of a collapsed hollow Calamites stem. I have my doubts about that since Calamites is a Carboniferous (and into the early Permian) plant. Although the Nubian sandstone has strata which are that age, they're marine deposits (all the way through to the Lower Cretaceous) and Calamites was a terrestrial swamp plant.
I'm still researching fossils from that area but haven't had any joy in finding a match so far.