Formative Stage Round Hornstone Hide Scraper

[SDhunter]

Nice biface

[Whippoorwill]

Page 4 of the link below may provide a clue. Was this a product of The Hopewell Culture?

http://www.uky.edu/OtherOrgs/KPS/books/funkwebb/funkwebbch11.pdf

[Whippoorwill]

Based on this article, this Little River Quarry was in production for thousands of years.

https://core.tdar.org/document/143291/adams-site-15ch90-and-the-little-river-christian-county-kentucky-clovis-workshop-complex

[Whippoorwill]

My question here is “how many of these discs does the Field Museum have?

http://www.ele.net/moorehead/oldwine.htm

[Whippoorwill]

https://ohioarchaeology.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/6discs.jpg

[flintguy]

There is a display at the Ohio History Center in Columbus that has 2,000 discs, each weights around one pound each. So literally one ton of discs were found in one spot.

[flintguy]

Here is a photo of that stache. That point was also found with the discs. It's about 10 inches in diameter.

[Tam]

I remember that pic good one

[flintguy]

Thanks Tam, strange to see these in person. I have seen this stash in books before, and then, there they were. You can reach over a grab them ( until security tackles you). Fun to see them piled up. Made me drool. That "point" is the size of a large diner plate. Biggest point I've ever seen.

[Whippoorwill]

Could this be one of many?

[flintguy]

I don't think there were any more points that size found.

[flintguy]

As far as more discs where you found it, maybe, but it might have been given in trade for an item, so only one in that spot.

[Whippoorwill]

This was found within 100’

[Hoss]

https://www.arrowheads.com/index.php...t-gerber-story Art Gerber found a Cache along the Ohio river of over 10,000 similar blades. Yes there could be more where that one came from.

[sarahsue]

That is a really nice artifact save. It looks like a large oval scraper. I would say it is associated with all the other artifacts you are finding in the same area. Probably not a Hopewell prefom blade. Here is a preform Hopewell cache blade that I found. The flaking is different from what you found.

[Whippoorwill]

That was my initial intuitive thought, hence the name of the post. It does not appear to have been used much if that is the case.

[Whippoorwill]

Very nice piece. Where did you find it?

[SurfaceHunter]

I find oval scrapers in a field where I find Adena and later to Mississippian period they are usually small in size

[Whippoorwill]

From Gerber to Hopewell. It is the belief of Moorehead that the flint quarry business in this immediate area was so vast that it supplied a limitless quantity of blank hornstone discs to northern communities.

”Many years later I (Moorehead) discovered the quarries on Little River, Tennessee (Kentucky), eighteen miles south of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, whence, I am persuaded, this flint was obtained. It was of the nodular variety, gray-blue in character, and could be easily worked. The quarry showed signs of extensive working.”

[clovisoid]

Some of the Crib mound bifaces were local hornstone, but a lot of them were probably from down your way. The quantity of material down in your area is really staggering.

[clovisoid]

In my opinion, the workmanship is just far too nice to be the standard Hopewell cache blank.

I have to see if I have any pictures, but Art separated out the nicest 200 bifaces in the big cache, wrote on them (1 of top 200 of 10,000) and signed them. I have one of them, and Whippoorwill's biface is much better made. Most of the Crib mound blanks look to have about 5-10 minutes of work on them. Some of them are literally just 3 or 4 flakes per side, plus some quick trimming to knock off the edge cortex. Masterful work of efficiency, but the impressive part is the number found not really the quality of the individual item.