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  • Mortar fragment

    This was found at a site where I have found multiple chipped stone tools.

    I'm fairly certain it is a fragment of a mortar.

    This one is unusual for the size of the divot which is much larger than normal.

    My only hesitation is to do with the pocks or pits in the divot that should be ground smooth.

    Curious what the panel has to say before I catalog it .

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    California

  • #2
    Also a obsidian preform (or expediant) and a small knife.

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    Lovely morning.
    California

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    • #3
      Good finds. Looks like a few plow mark here and there . That stone didn’t grow in the ground there. They brought it there and used it. I’m learning that when I see sandstone in areas of the fields I’ve been hunting to slow down more because it was brought into the area and I’ve picked up several pitted hammer stones by flipping up all the chunks which are from hearths or fire ring

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      • tomf
        tomf commented
        Editing a comment
        Could be plough damage, but so many separate abrasions?

        I think - or rather, I guess, that the longer horizontal ones ringing the inside of the divot might be natural fissures caused by weather and ageing.

        The deep scars on the top side could be plough damage.

        Or could everything be explained by the act of breaking the mortar intentionally?

        It's a clean quarter which implies at least two major traumas.


        Here there are tons of rocks of every kind in every place. So artifacts have to have a shape or some other giveaway to notice. I'm so tuned in to spotting tiny pieces of obsidian I have to constantly remind myself to take the wider view that allows me to find other kinds of things.

    • #4
      That's a nice little point. I just don't find many metates so I can't really give you any clues. I find grinding stones but not the stone they were grinding on. Kind of strange
      NW Georgia,

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      • tomf
        tomf commented
        Editing a comment
        It is strange to find the pestle but not the mortar.

        I thought about it and could only come up with of a few unconvincing reasons.

        Could it be that there are more pestles than mortars?

        Also the mortar is a lot less portable than the pestle and, most likely, are to be found at semi-permanent camp sites rather than hunting camps or other 'just passing through' spots. The ones I've found were within 100' of the creek. Perhaps pestles are light enough to be moved off the banks and into the creek during floods which separates them?

        I think I read somewhere that, in Georgia and Tennessee, milling technologies are more common in later periods - though they did exist in earlier days too -so maybe your sites are older?

      • SurfaceHunter
        SurfaceHunter commented
        Editing a comment
        Late Woodland setting but there are big boulders in the creek maybe they grounded on them then carried the pestle home. Creek isn't far from the sites. But none the less it will always be a mystery cause they sold the property this year to homes

    • #5
      Safe to say it's a mortar frag... My mind went to WWII, and I was grabbing a reference book for mortars, lol!


      Nice scenery, California is a beautiful place.
      "The education of a man is never completed until he dies." Robert E. Lee

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      • #6
        That would have been a good size!
        Searching the fields of NW Indiana and SW Michigan

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        • #7
          I’d keep an eye out in same area for another piece. I’ve seen trash/rock piles that the old timer farmers made . Unless they’ve removed rocks in times past there may still be a piece laying close to where you found that one would be my guess. Looks like a plow busted it up.

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