| Donna and Ken Cox have one lovely view out their east window and look
down upon miles of farmland from one of the highest hills in the area.
I took this picture early one morning last spring and little did I know
that they would be calling me concerning an artifact that a previous owner
had left with the house. When they first showed me this piece my immediate
reaction was that it was a fieldstone, however, upon closer examination,
one can see that it is a very crude adz and not made from the usual hardstone.
Stone can expound on this unusual artifact and the crinoid fossils that
it contains. Take note of the road that you see as it is a proposed runway,
however, we are all hoping that an airport will not be built here for it
would not only destroy over 23,000 acres of agricultural land, it would
destroy all the archaeological sites and they would not get the study that
they deserve. Our thanks to Donna and Ken for sharing this highly unusual
artifact…and I am willing to bet it won’t remain in the basement on a shelf
any longer…it deserves a wooden frame as we’ll most likely never see another
one of these…I shouldn’t think it worked too well as a tool.
Margo
The adz is a secondary woodworking tool, used to shape wood, as opposed
to a primary woodworking tool, such as an axe, which is used to procure
wood for manufacture into usable products. It seems that the hafted adz
appeared before the hafted axe did, indicating the primary need to alter
available woods from their original form. The axe, developed later as a
need for raw materials increased, may have evolved as populations out-grew
the available resources of ready-to-use wood.
The adz shown is rather crudely made from a called encrinal limestone.
It is soft and fragile and generally unsuitable for tool making and heavy
usage. The fossil inclusions are largely comprised of crinoid-stem segments
embedded in limestone. The Crinoid, sometimes referred to as a ‘sea-lily’,
first appeared in the early Ordovician—almost 400 million years ago—and
though many species died out some 320 million years later, others lived
on into modern times. There are approximately 5,000 known species of fossil
crinoids.
Hafted adzes are known to have appeared in refined form as early as
9,000 BC—probably evolving from Paleo-Indian uniface tools used to fashion
wood for handles, clubs, parts for snares and other uses. The distinctive
feature of an adz is that one face is very nearly flat, while the opposite
face is curved towards the bit-end from a heavier poll. The hafting was
lashed to the flat face of the tool, and the handle generally set to an
angle of less than 90 degrees to the bit. In use, the adz would be swung
downwards and drawn to the user, in effect planing off the outer layers
of wood. It is thought that dugout canoes first evolved during the Early
Archaic Period, shortly after the appearance of the adz itself. In practice,
stone woodworking tools do not hold an edge like a steel-bitted tool would,
thus, dugout canoes and other projects may have involved the use of fire
to ‘soften’ the material for the adz to remove.
This specimen is unusual in that it cannot have functioned very effectively
in the shaping and removal of wood, and is something of an anomaly in that
it’s practical application/s remain a mystery to us today.
Stone
|
