I think a lot of those axes primary purpose was as a weapon. The effort to cut down even a tree as big as your leg would have been enormous. It was done but not often. In a fire the wood was just stuck in intact. When the end burnt off they would stick in some more. Bones could be broke open with a hand held rock. A good piece of stone hafted to a nice piece of wood would have been a terrifyingly effective weapon.

I dont think ice holes were made when the ice got thick. I think they were just kept open. Covered with boughs, when the ice got thick enough. Winter would often be a starving time. Wasting energy to cut a big hole in thick ice is not a good way to last till spring.

DRF- thanks for the added pics. No pecking, no polish. The explanations on this thread further evidence that those stones are not artifacts. Keep looking! It’s a rush.

To others: Suspicion of use is not the same as evidence.

Many (if not most) smaller private collections consist of valid stone points with misclassified “nutting” and “grinding” stones. People often passionately defend these claims, but the fact remains that when compared to an actual metate, the lack of usefulness of these items becomes immediately apparent.

Situational context is extremely important. An omar or “geofact” in a field surrounded by thousands of flakes that has produced hundreds of points, can at times become a mildly interesting item. Yet even then, it is still just a rock due to the lack of tooling or wear marks. I find water-polished stones all the time that I know were carried to site by humans. But the lack of tooling leaves them classified as just rocks and left in place.

Stone axes were definitely primarily used to break apart already dead, already fallen timber. Mother Nature dropped the trees, humans chopped them up. They would’ve been extremely efficient tools for chopping at branch Y’s ( think of producing bundles of arm-sized sticks). Hafting would likely fail in an attempt to drop living, green lumber.

Cool find

MNCedar, I have heard that before. Take a modern single jack hammer into the woods. Pick up a piece of wood that would be a good club. Use the single jack to bust off limbs at the trunk of downed timber and the club to whack off whats left of a limb l after you grab the end and just bust it. use the hammer the same way. I could be wrong but I have a hard time believing the time and effort to make an axe head was for gathering firewood.

Good rule of thumb is, If your not sure, it probably isn’t.

I’m a Native American, born and bred right here in Montana.

Danny, we could sure bust up some firewood pretty quickly with stone mauls. Axes and celts would be indispensable for further reduction though. Varying degrees of polish on axe bits show they saw repeated, almost steady use. The way I understand it, larger axes and mauls were left at their location of use instead of being carried daily. There are certainly no absolutes in that department.

Thinking and envisioning scenarios like that is my favorite part of history and artifacts!

I think war club/war culture overlapped with horse culture a lot more, but I’m not as versed in that area so I won’t comment much there.

Went back out today and found this. Thought maybe what they call a chip or flake but not sure.

I have found 3 big grind stones that would have been used year to year, to big to move. I found these the other day, I think they look like war club stones.

put that into Boco hands and wow could he really clean up those frost scraped beaver pelts with that thumb nail scraper

If you look at the edges you can see small flakes taken out- that tool has been used as a secondary knife for cutting meat or scraping a hide thinner

it is what we would call brown calcodony chert, but names have changed in the past 40 years

Danny
They were used to crush bones (marrow) and qauter game also clear trees for garden and fire wood they would burn the base and chop at the base of trees to fell them, the main reason camps were vacated was they would run out of firewood.

Very nice axe here that was in the process of being resharpened you can see the break the polish and the new pecking.

I have a small collection. lol. To the original poster.. the stones you have are naturally occurring.

Well Nate I did not get my theory from a book but rather trying out stuff outdoors. Without toilets I believe they moved because human waste , discarded animal parts, tougher hunting, all edible plants nearby gathered up, and yes, easily accessible firewood, made it necessary. I wasn't there so again I could easy be wrong.

Some of the fishing spots have feet deep of scales where they lived. So fire was not always necessary as sun dried was also possible. They also knew how to salt as they taught the metis how to collect salt for the hides

Where those scales are feet deep were they there long term or was it an annual thing when the fishing was good ?

summer to winter then buffalo hunting and return in spring
first agriculture 300 Ad in Manitoba onward

Here is an interesting axe, if you look closely you can see lines etched both vertically and horizontally on both faces of the axe.

Who no's not I, but I do no a few days camping without a axe or saw I'm looking a lot harder for fire wood than I want to, I don't remember looking for a place to use the bathroom.