Glad to have found a spot that keeps producing, finally.

The two shorty perds have been re-sharpened down to the nub and overall length is only about 1 1/2 inches. Real nice to see the black beauty come out all in one piece; and the datestone was a cool find as well.

Enjoy!

Nice finds!

Good Golly, Brad, you really have found a great spot.
Took me 4 years to find a date stone and Bedrock jack [ with the cat's head date stone ] took 40 years.

I've always found that the more worked pieces you find in an area, the greater your chances are for finding something very special along with the brokes.
Tks for the pics

Yeah Hal, I dare you to find something like that black perd in Sanderson, that sure would make my day.

Bravo Brad! Your Cookin now dude! Early mans time piece and all..........Go Go Go!

wow a date stone now i feel like crap i found a stone this past weekend with similar markings in san marcos and threw it back down thought it was a natural piece of rock i will know better next time

Hard to say exactly "what" the ancients kept track of with these guys but I'll put in my educated guess.

I'd venture to say that before the calender year came about, they would need some way of tracking when certain things would be happening that were important to their cultures at the time. Heard movements, season shifts, or possibly even moon cycles could be some of the things they wanted to keep track of.

Of course it could just be notches in a gunstock that a hunter carved in the rock for how many kills he attained in a given period of time.

I tested the rock for hardness compared to a worked flint edge, and it isn't hard enough to do any sharpenening with (which was my other theory); so I have to feel it was some way to keep track of a certain recurring event.

You can see the straight lines carved in the rock..that was the give-away.

"herd" not "Heard"....

Usually spell check but I was in a hurry.

This is not going to help much ! !

Your stone has 7 lines and so does mine. Bedrock Jack's has only 4. If you were not able to find Jack's burried in past stories,,,,Go back to front page, right side, click the translucent covington -- WINTER 2007. Scroll 3/4 down till you see a guy in a ball cap holding a "cat's head"

Asside from the name ,I always asumed mine was one of two possibilities;;

1. The result of stem "grinding" of a lancelot type blade.

2. DOODLING. Whittleing had not yet been invented yet, but people had the same amount of time on their hands at some point in their daily routines as they did in the hayday of whittleing in the 19th century.

I googled date stones just to be sure thats what we should call the beast; but low and behold I didn't find anthing but archaeological studies performed on petrified dates in the middle east.

It could well have been for grinding, but I tested it myself and it just seems like not enough return on investment for how soft the stone itself is.

I more think it was a tally for some warrior in the clan/tribe.. on how many women he drug to the cave or how many animals he killed.