Amazing 20short. Thanks

Though I can not imagine a Indian packing that to the next camp ,could be some wise old bird rolled it into a badger hole and covered it for the trip through as they would surely be back to most of the good spots .

Wow! That is awesome, thanks for sharing.

The facial detail reminds me of some of the carvings and faces utilized by the Olmec Civilization in Mexico. They are known for their broad-nosed native african like faces. Very interesting that this culture could have traded with the Mound Builder culture of the Mississippi Valley, but makes perfect sense. Perhaps there is much more to these civilizations than we are aware.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olmecs

I had to split a bearing off a shaft yesterday. I used a chisel. Not an anvil. No splitting of anything was occurring with that big stone. Anyone can see the smaller axe head with the edge is what you would use to split something. Not buying net weights or anchor either. No reason for the flats in those applications. I’m going with anvil or sledge hammer....or the worlds first iron, as in ironing yer breechclout.

Nice artifacts.

We have a winner with this answer.
They just need your postal address and will forward it to you. There will be a 10 cent stamp on it and you pay the postal due fine..


Firing these stones and tapping off the area is very labour intensive, you cant over heat the rock and just enough cord has to be wrapped to heat a small area and then tapped off before it cools too much. A certain homogenous structure is needed in the rock as well.

Isn't it sweet to find those pieces that folks from another time labored over and with!
They were hearty folk!

Donna and I love to find projectiles every chance we get.

Eric,

What part of NJ were they found in the Piedmont or Coastal Plain, and have you found any arrowheads in the same area? My thinking is along the line of a few of the others- net weights for use in a tidal river. I don't think much if any bison remains are found in archaeological digs in our area during the time ground and pecked stone tools were used (Late Archaic- Woodland). And horses weren't re-introduced yet. Are the large flat bottoms ground smooth at all? Great axe head too, thanks for the interesting post.

I am located in the far northwestern corner of NJ. Very rocky ground, 1200 feet in elevation. Nearest flint outcropping (that I know of) is about 12 miles away. I am 5 miles from the Delaware River. Weighed them today, large one is 28.4 pounds smaller one 10.8.

I was told that the big ones were used to break ice for drinking water in wintertime .There are a lot of them found around the Mississippi bottoms.
just

Good evening Mr. Space,

I am happy to see this thread still up. Is it possible that the rocky ground, sediments, and hammers that you found could have come from somewhere else.....possibly miles and miles upstream?
Some from glaciers, and some from perhaps giant rivers that may have been possible to deposit such items years and years ago....?

In my opinion, sometimes we don't think on a big enough scale. Doing a quick google search of the area you described shows a lot of scarring on a grand scale regarding the Delaware River, glaciation, and possibly a drainage system that used to drain the Great Lakes. As any trapper knows, rivers have a nature about them. They gather stuff from one area and deposit them at another. There are cut banks and deposit banks.

Perhaps a mega river that flowed thousands of years ago deposited your finds on the very ground (deposit) you live on. Over time, smaller creeks and gullies eroded the evidence out. I attached a Google snaphot of a possible giant river flow. All of NW New Jersey would have been on the deposit bank of this mega river. Think Big.

I still think multi purpose tool. Probably used for everything mentioned plus stuff we haven't thought of

They were obviously doing things in day to day life other than smashing bones.

Do you think the bottoms were ground flat? Or just kind of worked out that way when they shaped the rest of the piece.

Friend of mine made several 20 pound sledge hammers, his family hand drove a lot of fence posts up in the hills. A near impossible job for a ten pound sledge, turned easier by a twenty pound model. And you did mention rocky ground.

Also could be they made the piece, it turned out too heavy to be practical and they gave up on it.

Sounds to me like you shouldn't wait 50 years before you comb the area again.

Area is a woodlot in the village of Beemerville, if you want to look on google earth. I would think if the pieces were carried downstream by some long ago river they would be river-rounded. Area was covered by glaciers, I don't think they were moved by nature as both are obviously from the same rock outcrop and are congruent with they type of rock we have here.

I would also add there is no doubt in my mind anyway, that these people would have been generally much stronger and more fit than we are today. Comparing what you or I could physically do, to what they could have done is apples to oranges.