SOME HISTORIC LITHIC (STONE) ARTIFACT TYPES

Marbles: limestone, flint, agate…

Whetstones, novaculite, etc.

Slate pencils, school/store tablets, roof slates

Beads: amber, cornelian, buttons, jewelry setting, cufflinks, watch fobs

Furniture: marble tops

Tombstones: marble, slate, fieldstone….

Stove or boiler isinglass (mica window)

Amber ferrules, cf pipe, pen

Meerschaum (a clay)

Bullet, pipe etc. mold

Soapstone lab sink, etc. apparatus

Gizzard stones

Salt: licks, etc….

Coal

Manganese and other ores mined, slag

DELOS HISTORIC CATEGORIES

ARMS, gunspall, gunflint, French, English

PERSONAL, gemstone, slate board, slate pencil, whetstone

TOY, marble

Grinding wheel, headstone, millstone, statuary

BUILDING MATERIAL, cut limestone block

Graphite battery rod

Limestone Marbles

Block, Robert, 1999, Marbles Illustrated, Schiffer Publishing Ltd, Atglen PA.

Alabaster and marble marbles were used in England by the 1400s. The first widely available stone marbles were made in the Salzburg and Berchtesgaden regions of Bavaria, in alpine southern Germany, with water mills in the 1600s. The first mills were side-operations to farming and forestry, but by the 1700s and 1800s, larger mills were in use in Saxony, especially Coburg, and Thuringen, in eastern Germany. A marble industry began in the Sonneberg around the time of the Thirty Years War, peaking in the 1740s when Salsberg immigrants arrived. There was a second peak in production in the Sonneberg in the later 19th century, when Germany had a significant export trade. During this later period there were many mines and mills in the Mengersreuth area, with 20 in the Effelden valley alone. With this expansion, many miners went to work in the wider toy industry and the rough materials began to come from the limestones of Sachendorf and Veilsdork and Spitelstein and Blumenrod near Coburg. Here, shallow, temporarily leased and then restored pits in fields produced limestone. The stone suitable for building and paving was also removed, then the desired stone was knapped into 100 pound blocks and stored in barns to protect the rock from frost splitting. The pits were backfilled and the reduction work was carried out in winter and wet weather. Eventually, ceramic and glass production became cheaper and stone marble production became uncommon.

The Berchtesgaden industry peaked 1780-1790, when the Almbach powered 40 mills. Three other local streams powered around 30 mills each. The Pfnur family of Almbach creek, Untersberg village, Bavaria was established in 1683 and has operated continuously from 300 years. German stone marbles became part of the export trade to northern German states, Holland and England. As ships ballast they made it to the East and West Indies. In the 1780s, up to 1000 hundredweights (around 10,000 marbles/hundredweight) were exported annually. In 1800, there were still 600 mills in Berteschgaden, but production had declined to 300 hundredweight.

A limestone from the Trudenthal region was mined from small hand-dug shafts. Only the smooth anchoring sediments of the Muschelkalk (mussel shell chalk) was needed, so shafts were low and horizontal to obtain books or leaves of this stone. The mine families hammered cubes from these still moist plates of limestone, knapping them down to even sized rough balls. They were then packed or wheelbarrowed to the mill for sale at a streamside settlement. The size of the mills was limited by the size and flow of the creek or river where they were placed. Here, timber frames or cribs held two millstone plates against each other; the bottom one of cast iron and the upper of beech wood. Both plates had a series of concentric grooves. The cubes or balls were sprinkled with fine sand and the blocks were set in motion. There was an opening in the top so that water could run through and cool the plates as well as carry away the resulting sludge and grit. The grinding of each run of production took 6 or 8 hours. The rough marbles were then polished in a turning barrel, sometimes with a color stain and flowers of sulphur.

Other Stone Marble Types

Agate: Handcut, modern machine cut; some faceted, gouges, some machine ground to polished; banded, black and white, grey, brown/red/orange/carnelian, occasional crystalline planes/inclusions. Sometimes dyed (blue). Germany ca. 1850-1920.

Other “mineral spheres”: limestone, onyx, dyed agate, jasper, obsidian, black obsidian, mahogany obsidian, snowflake obsidian, malachite, rose quartz, goldstone, tigereye, agateized petrified wood. Mostly machine ground, modern, some Mexican. Some handcut, probably turn of the century German marbles (1850-1920).

HISTORIC STONE ARTIFACT BIBLIOGRAPHY

ARKANSAS ARCHAEOLOGIST

1 (1960)

#3 Bonds, a boatstone with a metal pin in it, Cherokee?

#6 Bonds, a glass point, Pope County, Cherokee?

Hoffman, Michael P., 1980, An Effigy Catlinite Pipe from Northwest Arkansas. Arkansas Archeologist 21:12-13.

A catlinite squirrel effigy pipe was found near a spring branch in Fayetteville. It was made with metal tools. Glass beads were also found. It is perhaps associated with the immigrant tribes of the late 18th-early 19th century, perhaps the Osage; it is attributed in style to the Upper Mississippi Valley groups. Good photos.

ARKANSAS RESEARCH SERIES

RS11 Martin, 1978, Arkansas Post Bright & Montgomery

p. 58-65 gunflints, detailed description, drawing and poor photos

RS26, Stewart-Abernathy, 1986, Moser

p. 85 whetstones, one may be novaculite

p. 88 graphite pencils

RS56 K. Cande, 2000, Spradley Hollow rockshelters and a homestead (Ozark NF), Newton Co.

mortar/plaster (lime), graphite battery post

OTHER

Cande, K., 2005, Davidsonville, SRP.

Dolomite and limestone (structural/foundation trenches)

2000, Ashley Mansion (3PU256), SRP.

Huge mess of DELOS categories: building material and modified lithics, building stone, crystals, granite, cobbles, shale, slate, sandstone

asphalt, coal, graphite, limestone, tar: mostly architectural

Guendling, et al., 2001 Sanders kitchen, SRP.

Old Washington, an urban farmstead.

fieldstone slab pavement, rock footings

limestone marbles, “sarah’s slate”, tobacco pipes w/ meerschaum-like face, quartz crystal

2002 Block kitchen, old Washington (Hempstead), assimilated Jew’s urban farmstead

limestone marbles (n=12)

local chert gunflint

DELOS

Redfield, Alden

1962 The Dalton project

a gunflint, 12-M-12/3CS9, honey colored