Over 50 years ago I found a very large (over 20 pounds) (for lack of a better word) mallet. A few days ago I found a sister to it within 100 feet of where I found the bigger one. The first picture is the recent find, alongside a regular sized ( about 2.5 by 5 inches) axe head. The recent mallet weighs about 6 pounds and appears to be broken. The next 2 pictures show the old mallet and the newly found one. The back of each is ground completely flat. The 2 rocks have come from the same stone or outcroping. Lines in the rock match each other.
My question to you is what would these have been used for? It would take a VERY strong man just to swing them once hafted on a handle. Could these possibly been made by early settlers to use for rail splitting? I am interested in any serious opinions you might have.

i can think of several ways to use tools like that. i very seriously doubt they had a single purpose.

Large mauls like that show up at ancient flint deposits and were maybe suspended and swung like a pendulum for a variety of purposes. Breaking up nodules I would imagine. If they are indeed ground then I strongly suspect Native origin instead of early pioneers.

They also show up at kill sites, like buffalo jumps, etc. Think some were hafted on a faily short handle to finish the "job" on buffalo and mammoths that had broken legs after the big wreck. My gmaw and gpaw had a big skull crusher in their house when I was growing up. A big heavy chunk of granite with a groove and flat on one end and blunt on the other. I bet it weighed close to twenty pounds, and would have taken a big Indian to swing it with much of a handle! It is still in the family, and I coveted it since I was old enough to know what iit was! lol

Dugout anchors and net weights is what I was told they were used for.

I’d lean towards a kill stone also but who knows - fairly certain your finds predate any pioneers / settlers though. You can post it on treasure net or find mall and probably get some knowledgeable feedback.
On the strange artifact topic - I found this running traps on the Caney Fork river up on the Cumberland Plateau years ago. It was near a creek junction in the middle of nowhere where I had found several arrowheads over the years.

Nice finds.

That turtle is incredible.

I have read that the big stone axes were ceremonial, but can see where they could be useful for cracking a mammoth or bison skull to get the brains our for eating or tanning.

Keith

Very cool. Thanks for sharing

How abt that, an old Indian pig castrater
Good find

A hoe sharpener!!!

Interesting find. I look all the time and never find anything. In my 45 years here I have found one broken arrow head. Thanks for posting

Or a very large man could have made it, like a giant. There are a lot of large ancient artifacts found all over the globe. A lot of Native American history and legend mentions giants.

Some of the the artifacts found are so mind boggling and out of place, it really just doesn't make any sense in regards to modern day anthropology dogma.

Wow! the detail and craftmanship is incredible. Thanks for sharing! Chancey

I was thinking net weights also.

Try busting a buffalo femur to get the marrow with just about anything else would be a failure and probably break your fingers. Hafting is a good idea with those implements.

some killer artifacts on hear. maybe they are weights no one will ever realy know.

To know the history of that turtle figurine would be incredible. Is there that type of stone in the area? It may be just me, but there appears to be a lot of artistic similarity to the styles used by some of the Alaskan tribes. I do know that turtles held a lot of significance to the Osage as they figure in a local legend about the location of a tribal treasure. Thanks for sharing!

sence we are un the subject my grandfather foumd this near fort ancient on private land in a sand bar in the 80s. i took it to the ohio artifact association and a man who studys pipes told me it was not from ohio and that it came from a tribe frome central america and it was most likely traded. he said it was around 500 to 600 years old.

You never worked on something and thought, "If only I had a bigger hammer"?

Horse single foot hobble weight is one thing I have heard on some found in E. Mt.