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?
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?
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