Aerial LiDAR
view of site at 1 meter resolution,
with (partially destroyed) prehistoric linear earthwork
and single-file passageway, showing
artificial terracing on opposite (east/sheltered) side of hill. |

|
Google Earth View of Site
from South |
This material
is presented for consideration by anyone with an interest
in the early habitation of North America, describing artifacts first
recognized and recorded in 1987 at an unglaciated hilltop site in southeastern
Ohio, and first published in 2003.
These are compared with remarkably similar artifacts from locations in other parts of the
world. Twenty years ago, writing on this website this author was
the first to propose that, for whatever reason, when modifying lithic material for use as
tools our distant human (and quite possibly protohuman) predecessors often incorporated not only utility but also simple but quite recognizable zoomorphic
and/or anthropomorphic imagery into their rocks.

|
A Bird-Form hand tool
from this site in Guernsey County, Ohio |
Click image above for details. |
Perhaps this practice originated in
Africa (or wherever humans actually got started), migrating through millennia of ethnic and cultural
diversification northward and eastward into the Americas, surviving here into at
least the Early Woodland Period (ca. 2000 years BP).
For a
quick look at a few artifact photos from this website on Pinterest without
having to read lot of
words, click HERE: |
 |
Initially recognized only as crude stone tools, but subsequently as much more,
the artifacts here at 33GU218 have appeared in large
quantity at depths of from near the surface to over a meter below, and the surface of this
large site has only been scratched. At this time, several doctorate-level
professionals - geologists, petrologists, anthropologists, a forensic biologist,
and a few archaeologists - have
personally identified human agency in both lithic and organic material.
The Ohio Historic Preservation Office has included the site in the Ohio Archaeological
Inventory, recognizing evidence of prehistoric habitation. Ohio's state
archaeologists have, however, shown no interest in further inquiry, on the
rather odd assumption that the ruggedness of the unglaciated terrain here (and its distance from
Columbus, perhaps?) would have deterred early American Indians from leaving
anything
significant (including earthworks) in this area.
Since 2003 this author
has been proceeding on his own with the kind assistance and advice
from professional archaeologists, anthropologists, and - most important - physical scientists
including geologists, petrologists, and geomorphologists with the training and experience required
to determine whether or not a given rock or landform could have acquired its
current form entirely through natural processes. Engaging such expertise
was deemed necessary both as a sanity check and to ensure the credibility
of research into this subject so fraught with controversy and official
disapproval. So far, this approach has proven quite successful.
Additionally, high-quality microscopes and cameras are employed in the examination and verification of artifact material.
When time and money permit, compositional analysis is performed in laboratories equipped with scanning electronic microscopy (plus XRF, EDS, etc.) to confirm or
disconfirm the presence of, for example, red or yellow ochre pigmentation.
Applied Imagery's terrain modeling software is used in processing LiDAR point clouds to identify and create three-dimensional models of prehistoric
earthworks. Doing science properly is time-consuming and expensive - no way around it.
(There are alternatives, of course. If you have no idea what you are
looking at, it can be whatever you want it to be. Just post random rock
photos on the internet and become part of the large and vocal "portable rock
art" fantasy cult emerging on YouTube, Fecesbook, eBay, the bogus
rockartmuseum.com, etc.)
An
important side project in which this author has become involved: Confirmed and apparently Scandinavian artifacts (Homo sapiens
and/or earlier?) from deep within
glacial till in Schleswig-Holstein, northern Germany, possibly Lower through Upper
Palaeolithic, clearly inconsistent with the approved narrative
of early humans and/or their predecessors not migrating farther north than the 55th
parallel before the end of the last (Weichselian) ice age. |
|
A
Eurasian/Upper-Palaeolithic-style "Venus" figure in
limestone at 33GU218 in Ohio. Shouldn't be here, but here
she is, having eroded from the terrain surface with other
artifacts in April 2015, apparently the first such find recorded
from the
Western
Hemisphere. |
Click
HERE or image below for details: |

|
Click on the image to see it full size (scroll as needed). |
Judging from ceramic
material and a long, straight, and symmetrical earthwork
oriented to true north-south, it appears that the upper artifact layer at this
site may date
from the Early and/or Middle Woodland Period. Temporally/culturally
diagnostic flint projectile points from the vicinity of the site
indicate a human presence dating from the Early Archaic through the Middle Woodland
Period, or roughly 10,000 - 1500 years BP.

|
Click image
for details.
|
More important by far than just
this particular site, the finds here have led to the discovery of a simple and
consistent zoo-anthropomorphic iconography apparently routinely and usually perfunctorily
incorporated into lithic and other artifact material over many thousands of years and
across widely separated areas of this
planet. Most commonly the imagery is carved, ground, and/or pecked into pebble- or
cobble-sized stone tools. This author has tentatively (and no doubt
presumptuously) dubbed it
"Primal Imagery". (An overdue attempt at concisely deconstructing it may
[or may not] appear on this sadly disjointed website before too long. Meantime, click here to see the existing clumsy start at
this.)
Non-Useful Websites
|

|
!!
RANT ALERT !! |
Since this website was launched in 2003 and widely
viewed, the now forensically verified "Portable Rock Art / Figure
Stones" artifact typology is becoming more extensively recognized.
And in the past few years there has been
quite a proliferation of new and mostly imitative/plagiaristic websites on the subject, at widely varying
levels of plausibility and scientific validation, unfortunately at an
increasingly and embarrassingly low level compromising the overall
credibility of this quite legitimate line of investigation and the efforts of
competent researchers who have invested a lot of time, work, and money in an honest effort
to determine what is real and what is not. On these recent
websites scientific/forensic evidence has been almost entirely omitted from the discussion, replaced by lithic Rorschach
games probably revealing something of a presenter's personality and state of
mind, but nothing archaeologically meaningful. Not surprisingly, even the imbecilic
archaeology fantasy magazine Ancient American has
now jumped onto the "portable rock art" bandwagon with its characteristic
plagiarism, clumsy writing, and
inept photography. Likewise, and firmly in the pop
archaeology category, the slicker but only slightly less dimwitted
and little more
credible Ancient
Origins has recently joined the party.
Doing a search for "portable rock art", one is
now swamped with poor-quality images of rocks that neither resemble anything else nor show
evidence of human modification. The now overused term "pareidolia",
something to which we are all subject to a greater or lesser extent, is in fact an apt description of most of
this. Among the more cringeworthy of
the recently appearing knockoffs of daysknob.com are the so far mostly random gravel display
"rockartmuseum.com" and the semiliterate/comical "eoliths.blogspot.com".
Functioning at about the same level of competence, these two have formed a partnership in propagating general
goofiness.
With a link to PayPal, the "Portable Rock Art Museum"
wheedles for money
("donations") while showing vaguely face-like patterns
on apparently unmodified stones as evidence of Neanderthals in North America,
and encouraging/facilitating the sale of ancient artifacts whether real or
imaginary. This is
not a museum, but Jul "Rocky" Jones' display of a claimed
12,000+ photos of rocks submitted to him by people wanting to have them
"authenticated" as artifacts, often for the purpose of scamming
gullible collectors on eBay,
Etsy, etc. Since Mr.
Jones apparently does not reject anything, there are, not
surprisingly, a very few seemingly genuine and sometimes quite interesting figure stones among the huge
pile of geofacts, counterfeits, Mexican tourist souvenirs, and
undifferentiated crap.
But even in the best cases, details of provenience and hence
archaeological meaning have usually been lost.
"Eolith's", which hosts "Rock Art
Museum's" forum, and whose author Brett Martin rather
unconvincingly claims an IQ of 160+, presents us with "proof" - rocks perceived as resembling dinosaur
heads - that humans and dinosaurs walked the earth concurrently, thus
debunking that pesky evolution theory once and for all. On neither
of these websites is there any mention of validation of or even
favorable comments on
any of this by anyone trained in the pertinent
physical sciences (geology, petrology, chemistry, forensics, etc.). Even a
rudimentary understanding of the scientific
method seems completely absent, as does any capacity for critical thinking.
While these new websites provide an entertaining display of the Dunning-Kruger
effect, they make no contribution to intelligent and responsible
research.
At the very least, anyone wishing to present meaningfully on this topic (or even to understand it) owes it to him/herself
(and to everyone else) to learn the basics of lithic (rock) material. While this is not trivial, it certainly is not "rocket science", and there are numerous free online resources for learning geology.
And since pareidolia is now playing an increasingly large role in the study of
Figure Stones, a greater understanding of this universally human foible is very much called for.
In 2016 Prof. Robert G. Bednarik, long recognized as a pre-eminent authority on palaeolithic portable rock art and rock art in general, published an excellent
and objective essay titled
"Rock Art and Pareidolia" in Volume 33 No. 2 of the
peer-reviewed journal Rock Art Research. HERE is a link to this article.
Page 176 discusses small
Figure Stones in particular.
|
 |
Click Image to
expand article. |
The first principle is that you
must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. - Richard
P. Feynman
|
|
|
Some historical background on
this artifact typology: In
the nineteenth century Jacques
Boucher de Crèvecœur de Perthes, an avocational archaeologist in France, conclusively demonstrated
with the help of professional geologists (to the dismay and anger of the
archaeological establishment) that stone tools in that part of the world dated
from the Ice Age, a fact now universally accepted in the archaeological
community. Subsequent to this author's recognition of the iconographic
artifacts at this Ohio site, he became aware that Boucher de Perthes had also noted that many of the
French artifacts in direct context with the tools incorporated simple anthropomorphic and zoomorphic imagery, calling these "Pierres
Figures", or "Figure Stones". This latter observation
has since been almost completely ignored, and it remains pretty much de rigueur
among modern archaeologists to summarily dismiss the many discoveries of
these by competent avocational archaeologists despite the often clear imagery and
accompanying unequivocal physical evidence of human workmanship. (See, for
example, these finds from northern Germany.)
In recent years the advent of
the internet has allowed a worldwide exchange of images and data that clearly validate the presence of such artifact material and the
consistency of its essential iconographic components and subcomponents.
This author has adopted and applied Boucher de Perthes' term "Figure Stones" in
presenting his own and others' finds for over twenty years now, and along with
"Portable Rock Art" this seems to
have become more or less the standard designation among those now pursuing this line of
inquiry.
|
A
big and obvious Figure Stone, a verified case in point:
|

|
Click image for
published article with more photos. |
A large sandstone
turtle head with eyes carved on both sides, found by Dirk Morgan
near Fort Ancient in Warren County, Ohio. After dismissal as a
natural rock (geofact) by Ohio's state
("Ohio History Connection") archaeologists who
refused to look at it, it
was identified as man-made by geologists and
professional archaeologists.
Genuine
science examines the unexplained. |
Its
fraudulent impersonation "explains"
the unexamined. |
|
|
Another
rejected but professionally authenticated zoomorphic
artifact, a bifacially edged side scraper skillfully
crafted as a bird
figure.
|

|
Click image for
an article on this piece published in Ohio
Archaeologist, fall 2013. |
|
Some of the Artifacts
from 33GU218 - click
images to expand:
Fun Troublemaking
|
Many
archaeologists claim they do not see simple face-like
images carved and/or ground into lithic artifact
material, and that these do not exist, being just "pareidolia"
on the part of the beholder. But are
they just bluffing? For a discussion of this from
the perspective of recent research in neuroscience,
click
here:

|
(Or
click on the image above.) |
|
|
The
age of most of the artifacts at this site has not yet been conclusively determined, but their quantity,
consistency of form, distinctive
carving marks, and representation of bird and
shaman-like hybrid bird-human
images indicate that they are
of human manufacture. Several spirally fractured deer bones have
been unearthed, indicating human activity. Human remains in the
form of hair, usually
dark brown when not faded, have appeared in direct context with the lithic
artifacts. Some
of the hairs were submitted to the Center for the Study of the
First Americans, where in November 2003 the late Dr. Robson Bonnichsen identified them as human.
In 2004 genetics researcher Dr. Tom Gilbert,
then at the Univ. of Arizona, attempted mitochondrial DNA analysis of a
dozen hairs from
the site, but unfortunately none of their DNA had survived, despite their
outward appearance of being in good condition. It is hoped that
hairs might appear that have somehow been protected from moisture,
freezing, and thawing. One of the hairs remaining after the
necessarily destructive attempt at DNA extraction has been verified
by Dr. Scott Moody, professor of forensic biology at Ohio University, as
being obviously human and apparently quite old. Dr. Moody also
identified artificially dyed plant fibers in
direct context with the artifact
material.
Whatever the age of this material might prove to
be, it seems to point to an important if unrecognized anthropological
and cultural phenomenon - the almost ubiquitous shaman-like bird-human
figure characterizing the "rock art" at this site, remarkably
consistent in its arrangement of readily identifiable sub- components. Strangely, this
figure incorporates iconography quite evident in modern but traditional
Inuit/Yupik art, and also present in European
Paleolithic
artifacts, as well as in Australian material of
unknown age, apparently a Primal Image. (The presence of "portable rock art" or "mobile rock art" has
long been recognized in European artifact material, and is starting to be seen
for what it is at sites in North America. At this site and others, it is
often incorporated into simple lithic tools.)
|
Bird-Human Figures
- Click Photo for
Explanation. |
From the huge
quantity of lithic artifact material, it seems that this site, with its
commanding view, ample water supply, and terraced eastern (sheltered)
slope, may
have seen more than just part-time habitation. Initially, the
possibility of a "pre-Clovis" presence came to mind since while
none of the popularly recog- nized "Indian" spear heads and projectile points
had appeared, many of the human-modified stones of local and
non-local lithology were professionally recognized as in fact being
artifactual, with others
having a very high proba- bility of being so. But subsequently,
similar artifact material has appeared at other sites in direct context
with points, blades, etc. temporally diagnostic of time periods as recent
as Middle Woodland (roughly 100 BC to 500 AD). Nonetheless, the
distinct similarity of the artifact material here to that at the Gault
(Clovis) and Topper (pre-Clovis) sites leaves open the at least
hypo- thetical possibility that the more deeply buried artifacts (apparently
at at least a meter or so beneath the terrain surface) might predate the Clovis time frame.
If not
temporally "pre-Clovis", they certainly are technologically,
and may represent the lithic tools from which Clovis and later technology
evolved. And tools of this kind seem to have coexisted for a
long time with the currently more
recognized and familiar flint implements, serving when and where these were
not readily available. At this point, the actual age of this officially
unrecognized yet professionally verified artifact material is of less interest than the simple
fact that it is present, but contextual evidence strongly indicates that
in the upper strata it is Early to Middle Woodland in age, or very roughly
two thousand years old.
A large
linear earthwork
is present at the site, a symmetrical rounded wall roughly 6 m
(20') high at its highest point and about 475 m (1560')
in length.
It is
quite straight and oriented to true north-south. Such
astronomical orientation and dimensions are characteristic of Late Archaic
through Middle Woodland earthworks, as is the overall
morphology of the structure, which includes a shallow trench along its east side (uphill toward the top of the
knob).
Below, a winter view across the passageway, along the length
of the earthwork.
|

|
The one passageway,
single-file through the structure, is aligned toward the
summit of the knob, which is roughly 117 m (385')
horizontally distant and 27 m (89') higher. (As
is evident in the winter photo above, this gateway
is also aligned toward the lower hill farther west.)
Such wall earthworks are typically associated with
ceremonial sites oriented to solar events, and other
features of this site suggest that it is the case
here. Most directly, consider this photo of the
vernal equinox sunset through the gateway:
Below, the
opposite (west) end of the gateway with large and
somewhat zoomorphic sandstone slabs possibly collapsed from an original
structure flanking the upward path. (Note that
nothing like this is present on the uphill [east]
end.)
Below, the summer solstice sunset viewed from
the top of the knob as the sun arcs downward at 301 degrees
behind
the prominent hill 3.94 km (2.44 mi) in the distance, seen from quite near the
location on the knob in direct line with the earthwork's
passageway. (The view from the precise location, a short
distance to the left [south], is now obscured by trees.) |
Below, a white oak
estimated by an Ohio state forester in 2009 to be about
230 years
old, growing from the surface of the
earthwork. This is in itself good physical
evidence that the structure is not of recent
origin. In addition, vertical core samples
taken by a professional archaeologist yielded dense clay indicating against recent
deposition as claimed by Ohio's state
archaeologists. |
|
So far, aside from the earthwork, the artifact at this site that is, in terms of
currently recognized evidence, best temporally/culturally diagnostic
is a ceramic sherd from the uppermost artifact layer, about 12 cm (5") down at the top of
the hill. This is an apparent rim sherd identified by a
professional Ohio archaeologist as likely being from the Middle Woodland
Period, or roughly 2000 years BP. (Older
flint points have been found on bottomland just north of
the site.)
|
Artifact material bearing imagery characteristic of this site
has been found
in areas of Ohio
that, unlike this location, were flattened by glaciation,
suggesting that the material there is less
than 14,000 years old (unless, of course, it simply survived where it had
been earlier
or was
carried in by an ice sheet). In 2005 Dave Gillilan in Pickaway
County, Ohio (glacial boundary) discovered, at a depth of about 1.5 m
(5') in apparently undisturbed ground,
a deliberately buried cache of artifacts quite similar in form and composition to those
at 33GU218 but generally more refined, and accompanied by numerous flint and
quartz points, blades, etc. characteristic of the Late Archaic and Early
Woodland Periods
(roughly 2000 years BP). And some of the other artifacts in direct context are
very
strange, including non-utilitarian objects of iron, the carbon content of
which has been radiocarbon dated to around 400 AD, suggesting prehistoric
iron smelting by Native Americans. (Similar iron artifacts, not
yet dated, have appeared here at
33GU218).
The lithic
artifacts found so far at Day's Knob are carved, chipped, flaked, split,
and abraded
mainly from the local limestone, sandstone, hematite, and limonite. Heavy V-profile incision
marks (seemingly decorative or symbolic in most cases) are a distinctive characteristic of this assemblage.
A few of the simple tools are made from
non-local igneous or metamorphic rock. The
site is well south of the glacial boundary, beyond the extent of
significant outwash; also, it is on a hill rising about 120 meters (400')
above any creek beds in which such material might appear. It seems
reasonable to assume that this material was imported by the site's
inhabitants.

|
Click image for details. |
Why there are not more flint implements here is
somewhat of a mystery, but it is evident that the hard limestone abundant
at the site was adequate for the population's needs at the time (it is
quite capable of cutting wood, for example); they just
used what was there, and flint does not occur
naturally in Guernsey County. Apparently they were unaware that 21st
century AD archaeologists would not have approved their material for tool making.
The original expectation was to deal here only with the
artifacts appearing at Day's Knob, but it has subsequently (and not surprisingly)
become clear that material of very similar form and incorporated
iconography is to be found in many
places in North America (as far away as California), and, initially rather
unexpectedly, in other parts of the world.
Among professionally excavated potentially "pre-Clovis" sites in North
America, it almost certainly is present (even if not recognized) at Topper
beneath the Clovis-age strata, and at Gault among
diagnostically Clovis-age material.
Topper
Gault |

|
Click
images for details.
|
Many
visitors to this website, collectors and amateur archaeologists in the USA
and even Europe, have contacted this author to show very similar material
they have found. At least two in the USA
had already independently recognized their finds as probable artifacts, and
the European contributors (apparently having fewer preconceptions) had been doing this
for quite some time (for example, among other longtime investigators,
Ursel Benekendorff
in Germany). Individual visitors' interpretations of the material vary
widely (sometimes as naturalistic depictions of extinct animals, early
hominin physiognomies, etc.), frequently differing from this author's
rather conservative ones - but right now this is not so important. (And
the "professionals" will
eventually pontificate endlessly on all this once they become aware of it,
and claim to have discovered it.) The objects from this site are, for the most
part, clearly artifactual and
of essentially the same morphology
and incorporated symbolic motifs, particularly significant in the context of the early habitation of North America.
And the overall implications for the worldwide migration timeline are
obvious. Some of the visitors' contributions (no time to include
all of them yet), and some of this
author's finds from other countries can be seen
by clicking these links:
____________________
Bird Forms
____________________
Strangely enough, in
many cases the functional tools
at 33GU218 are formed at least abstractly in the shape of birds or
bird-humans, which apparently played
a dominant role in the belief system (animism/shamanism?) of the people that left these
mysterious objects behind. Most of the bird forms have a rounded or even
anthropomorphic face, but
the overall morphology, and an eye distinctly carved in the appropriate place, are unmistakable when one even casually looks for
them.

|
Bird-Shaped
tools - click image for details. |
Tools
and/or decorative/symbolic objects ("portable art") of this form have
also appeared in other
parts of the world; some of these are claimed to date from several hundred
thousand years ago, and the easily recognized form persists in tools well
into the Neolithic.
______________
Decorative/Symbolic
Birds
______________ Besides being fashioned from
rock, some of the primarily symbolic or decor- ative bird figures at
Day's Knob are fashioned from various organic materials.
(Click
images below for details:)
|

|
Pitch
Wood
Clay/Hair
|
|
|
The organic materials' state of preservation is
good,
apparently due to their having been packed tightly into clay of low acidity. This
includes the verified human hairs that have
appeared in direct context. |
|
Click
image for details.
|
________________The Bird Spirit
(Bird-Human)________________
Even more frequently
than the actual bird form, the image of a hybrid bird-human creature
appears - referred to here as the "Bird Spirit". (Since
this author seems to have discovered it, at least in this context, he
presumably can call it whatever he likes.) Whatever the age of this
site might prove to be, the Bird Spirit image in itself is probably of
considerable anthropological signifi- cance, being apparently of quite
ancient origin. In artifacts of the European Paleolithic
it appears consistently, resembling in small detail the image here, and
persists quite identifiably into modern but traditional Inuit/Yupik
("Eskimo") "transformation
art". (Actually, it has subsequently come to this author's
attention that the Inuit and Yupik have been calling this bird-human figure
"Bird Spirit", or even just "bird", for a very
long time. Oops! So much for this author's originality...)
The figure also appears in Australia, Asia,
and other parts of the world, seemingly a Primal Image.
For a
while, this author was tentatively identifying numerous figures on stone
tools as animals such as bear and wildcat. Then came the
discovery of what appeared to be the image of a human head made of a hard
clay/ochre/plant amalgam, half buried at the bottom of a washed out rut in the
"driveway" up the knob, and quite distinct in composition from the
surrounding mud. In its mouth were two distinctly detailed
birds joined together, and it was adorned with several other small
bird figures. Looking more closely at the mischaracterized
"animal" images on the tools and large stone figures then revealed that these usually had
mouths abstractly or distinctly shaped like birds, leading to the recognition
of a highly standardized albeit stylized bird-human figure. The constant
repetition of
a complex and recognizable pattern was unmistakable. (A few of the
Figure Stones here are, however, distinctly and naturalistically in the form
of particular non-bird animal heads, e.g., rabbit, dog,
bear, equid, human. And petroglyphs seem to include spider
and mastodon.)
The head of a
Bird Spirit may be strongly anthropomorphic, with distinctly human
nose and eyes at the front of the face, or more bird-like
with an elon- gated head. In either case, it usually has a mouth rather than a beak. Often
one eye is open and the other is shut. Below is a sketch
of the general form, a simple schematic showing most of the typical components
described in following paragraphs. (Unlike the people that created these objects, this author has no artistic
talent. Do not laugh.)
The sketch below shows the general form of the
two-faced (janiform) image appearing repeatedly in the carved rocks at this site, with the
quasi-anthropomorphic
shaman-like face at one end and a more zoomorphic one at the other: |
____________
A Bird Spirit
(or similar zoo-anthropomorphic) figure typically exhibits at least some of the following
features shown below, apparently basic components in a set of Primal
Images.
Click on the underscored
terms or the "thumbnails" for photos:
____
A
bird or other creature facing forward (sometimes sideward) on top of the head, often suggesting
shaman headgear.
|
Click image
for details. |
____
One
or more creatures emerging from the mouth,
possibly a theme of regeneration or transformation, like the figure-emerging-egg-like and
figure-from-the-belly imagery also shown below. Sometimes there is a
fractal-like succession of figures, each emerging from the one
preceding it.
|
|
Click image
for details.
|
____
The
head of a creature emerging
from the belly of the primary figure.

|
Click image
for details.
|
____
A creature emerging from the posterior, in the manner of an
egg.

|
Click image
for details. |
____
Janiform - a face at one end of the figure, another at the the opposite
end looking in the opposite direction. Typically one face is more or less anthropomorphic,
and the other more zoomorphic.
|
Click image
for details.
|
____
A
mouth consisting of two birds conjoined most of the way back
from their heads, and facing away from each other with their heads forming or occupying the corners of the mouth. When the
figure is depicted only in profile (more common), the mouth has the form of a
single bird
facing toward the back of the head.
|
Click image
for details. |
Sometimes
the mouth takes the form of a big toothy grin.
|
Click image
for details. |
____ Eyes
typically circular
or diamond/lozenge/rhombus-shaped, very often with a distinct raised or indented iris in the center.
When the face appears in frontal view, often one eye is open while
the other (more commonly the left?), is partly or fully closed.
The eyes seem to have received particular attention to detail, and are
among the most quickly recognizable evidence of human agency in
the lithic artifact material. Sometimes they are micro-carved into
the form of a bird or bird-human head.
|
Click image
for details. |
____
A
nose consisting of a bird or human-like head facing outward or downward.
|
Click image
for details. |
____
A
chin, if significantly present, in the form of another
creature.

|
Click image
for details. |
____
A
bird or bird-human on the back of
another one, often suggesting copulation.
|
 |
Click image
for details. |
____
A
bird or other creature on
the side of the
primary figure.

|
Click image
for details. |
____
The
figures typically exhibit symmetry in that the reverse side usually
bears a similar image, at least thematically.
 |
Click image for details. |
____
As
is evident from the features described above, the
figures are typically polymorphic/polyiconic - multiple images in one. The
details of an image and its multiple components are often not deeply or distinctly carved, and
are usually best visible (sometimes only visible) with the light source above
the figure when positioned vertically. Sometimes when the figure is
rotated 180 degrees, one image or set of images virtually disappears and another comes
into view. The artisans clearly understood the interplay of
light and shadow. While often varying
markedly in overall appearance, the figures appearing usually exhibit the same general arrangement of subcomponents.

|
Click image
for details. |
____________
For a tip on effectively photographing artifacts like
these (it can be tricky), click the
photo below:
|
____________
The image of
the Bird Spirit appears to
be of ancient and primal origin, present in stone images from Europe,
Asia, Australia, and
Africa often dating back into the
Paleolithic. This has survived from its origins in the very earliest
"art" of the
Old World into the
Paleolithic in
the western hemisphere, and in quite rec- ognizable form into the
Mississippian period, as is clearly visible on the well known Cahokia Birdman
Tablet:
Inuit/Yupik (Eskimo) "transformation
art" incorporates many if not most of the various Bird Spirit (bird-human)
themes in the Day's Knob artifact material, like the very common bird-from-the-mouth
below. A cultural affinity seems quite apparent:
It
is interesting to speculate on the origin of the Bird Spirit image.
Cave paintings of the Paleolithic, with their magnificent
depictions of animals of all sorts, often include people only as simple
"stick" figures,
if at all. It has been conjectured that humans of that time
considered themselves to be essentially separate from the natural world, having come
from above. One of this author's possibly strange hypotheses is that
this Bird Spirit figure is the manifestation of a sort of "collective
unconscious". Many or perhaps most of us have had vivid flying
dreams, particularly in childhood. It seems reasonable to think that
if we do it, people hundreds of thousands of years ago did it also, and
took it much more seriously and literally. And early humans poking
around on the ground must have regarded birds with more than a little
wonder. When people first began to think of themselves as transcending their earthbound condition, birds must have quickly come to
mind, and a "morphing" of human and bird in their physically rendered imagery seems a logical extension of this.
Given its wide geographical distribution and
apparently great antiquity, one might tentatively speculate that the
bird-human image originated in Africa, then was carried into Europe and the
Middle East, then on into Asia and Australia,
and across Beringia to North America.
Click the image
below for bird-human figures and related material from other parts of the
world:
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Click
image for details.
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__________________Human
Figures
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Figures that can be identified as
distinctly human are less common at this site than those that are
zoomorphic or zoo-anthropomorphic. Of the human images that have
appeared, several are faces eye-to-eye or mouth-to-mouth with a hybrid creature,
sometimes sharing an eye. |
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Click image for details. |
____________________Petroglyphs
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Click image for details. |
____________________ Rock
Paintings
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___________________ Larger
Stone Sculpture
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Click image for details. |
___________________ Personal
Ornamentation ___________________
These are two pendants - one the image of a bird, the other
a disk. The holes drilled in each are of the same size,
and appear to have been produced in the same manner.
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Click images
for details. |
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Micro- Art
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Some images are as small as a couple of millimeters, indicating remarkable visual acuity.

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Click image for details. |
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Clay
Figures ____________________
One of the
more unusual (and certainly controversial) finds at this site is the
many zoomorphic figures made from clay or a compressed amalgam of mud, ochre, and plant material.
Some contain verified human hairs and/or artificially colored plant fibers.

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Click image for details. |
Leaves and other plant material
were sometimes attached,
including a piece of pine cone in one case.
(There are no pine trees currently at the site.) Apparently,
packing the objects into the dense clay created a more or less
anoxic environment that protected the plant
material.

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Click image
for details.
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Iron
______________________
Iron artifacts appear at the site,
almost all of a non-utilitarian nature, and seem- ingly the
product of direct-reduction smelting. (Speculative at this
point.)

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Click image for details. |
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Glass _____________________

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Click image for details. |
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Wood
____________________
Wooden bird figures, as
well as cleanly cut and carved
wooden sticks, often appear buried in the clay, rather well preserved in
context with other artifact material.

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Click image for details. |
_________________ Stone
Tools
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Among the
assemblage, several very general tool templates are evident. Since
few of the implements are made of flint (which does not appear naturally
in this area), they do not fit well into the classic "Indian" taxonomy, so this
is only a crude attempt at classification (fitting square peg into round hole). Click on the links
below for photos and/or expanded descriptions. (Please
note: This part of the website is poorly developed, showing mainly low resolution photos of just a few of the earliest tool finds. There are
better examples that will be posted later.)
Since there is evidence at this site of
extensive earth moving and at least some plant cultivation, it seems likely
that many of the tools were simply digging implements.
Small
Gouges and Picks: These are pointed implements contoured for right-handed thumb and finger
grasp, often in the form of a bird or bird head.
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Click image for details.
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Large
Gouges:
These are pointed or chisel-shaped right-hand implements contoured either for downward or for forward thrusting.
Like the hand axes, they often exhibit the characteristic grooves and
ridges for thumb and fingers.

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Click image for details.
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Hand Axes:
These have a bifacial bit edge and a wider, rounded proximal edge for
right-handed grasping. The sides of the implement are often grooved
and/or ridged for thumb on one side and fingers on the other.

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Click image for details.
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Wing-Shaped
Implements:
These are flared trianguloids in a generally birdlike form, including scrapers, hand axes, gouges, and abraders.
This is one of the most common templates in the assemblage, and maybe a
precursor of the well known bannerstone.

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Click image for details.
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Misc.
Scrapers and Cutting Tools:
These vary considerably in size and form. Most are more or less in the
shape of a bird or bird head.

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Click image for details.
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Semilunar
Implements: These are celts,
scrapers, or abraders with a bifacially beveled bit edge
along the circumference, and a flat or more-or-less flat proximal grasping end.
They are usually very simple, but are sometimes well detailed with contours and/or flanges for
right-handed holding. The size range is considerable.

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Click image for details.
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Sandstone
Abraders: Hand-held or
finger-held grinding tools apparently for surface reduction and forming of other
implements and decorative/symbolic objects. These appear in huge quantity across the site.

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Click image for details.
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Tool
Preforms:
Rocks split and carved in preparation for further
process- ing
into tools.
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Click image
for details.
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Although the implements are sometimes bizarre in appearance, close inspection reveals
genuine skill, creativity, and attention to detail in fabricating a functional tool from the material at hand.
It seems reasonable to assume that these tools were, when actually used,
applied with considerable force over an extended period of time, and that
sharp or rough edges against the hand or fingers would have been
intolerable. On this assumption, an object at this site is very
seldom classified as a tool unless it meets these simple
criteria: It must fit firmly and comfortably in the right hand, or, if small, in the
fingers. When the object is held in a position in which there is
such a fit, the bit edge or point must be in the appropriate orientation
to perform its function. It is remarkable that, with the exception
of some of the more amorphous sandstone abraders, the tools present at this site
both meet these require- ments and manage in most cases to
recognizably if abstractly incorporate the ever-present bird or Bird-Human image. It seems that cutting the image was an integral part
of the manufacturing process, as much so as making the point or edge and
the grasping surface. It was seldom an intentional display of
artistic virtuosity - just part of the routine, perhaps like forming
the cross on hot cross buns. Assuming an animistic
belief system, maybe it was just putting the spirit's image on the rock it
was believed to inhabit. In any event, it seems that a rock was
modified to incorporate both utility and symbology.
In contemplating whether a given lithic artifact is a "tool" or a piece of simple "art", a fair amount of confusion has arisen because the concept of art is, relatively speaking, a very recent one in the course of humans' physical,
cognitive, and cultural evolution.
Seeing and judging what was left behind by people many thousands of years ago only through only the lens of one's own culturally conditioned perceptions will never lead to an understanding of what was really happening.
This author would propose that many of the puzzling worked stones (often called "portable rock art") that have been examined at this site and throughout much of the world, probably
many of which no longer show clear evidence of use wear, are both "tools" and "art"
or perhaps neither - just potentially if not always utilitarian objects that also routinely incorporate rudimentary iconography.
It has long been recognized, as in the Rift Valley in Africa, that early humans
("hominins") produced and left behind vastly more stone implements than were ever actually used, what would seem to be an almost compulsive behavior deriving from the fact that the manufacture of stone tools was a matter of everyday survival.
Perhaps an evolving animistic belief system (i.e., everything is inhabited by a spirit) and intellectual capacity for symbolic representation gave rise to the routine incorporation of simple imagery into potential tools.
(This seems to have been in full swing by at least 450,000 years ago, judging from some of the European finds from reasonably secure stratigraphic context.)
As was mentioned above, a few years ago this author noted consistent motifs and their subcomponents incorporated into artifacts from this site and others in
Europe and Australia, and a distinct correspondence in modern but
tradi- tional Inuit/Yupik carvings and masks, which also derive from something quite ancient and primal in a culture intimately connected to nature. In this context, consider this quote from anthropologist Edmund Carpenter's 1973 book "Eskimo Realities": "No word meaning 'art' occurs in Eskimo, nor does 'artist'; there are only people. Nor is any distinction made between utilitarian and
dec- orative objects." (Thanks to Richard Wilson of Watford, England for pointing out this book after being subjected to this author's ravings on the similarity of Inuit/Yupik iconography motifs to those of the European Paleolithic.)
It seems likely that the symbology persisted through many thousands of years of migration and ethnic/cultural diversification.
(Belief systems, like languages, are not bound to ethnicity.) It is interesting and significant that just recently professional European
archae- ologists have announced with great fanfare their realization that simple tools at Wilczyce and
Lalinde/Gönnersdorf,
showing no signs of use wear, are in the form of the long recognized "Venus" figurines that have appeared at various sites.
The fact of the matter is that amateur archaeologists, free of the long-
standing preconceptions, have been recognizing and
publishing this relation- ship for decades. While the perceptiveness and insight of the
professional archaeologists in this recent discovery certainly is to be
commended, it seems that this announcement is, as is so often the case, a matter of assigning
impor- tance to a given discovery less on the basis of its
archaeological significance than on the academic credentials of the observers.
The presence of rudimen- tary "portable rock art" in the form of "tools" has long been rejected in Europe and elsewhere, this being
"argumentation from absence"; no one (with a very few unpopular exceptions) in the professional/academic archaeological
com- munity had reported it, so
it was assumed not to exist.
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The artifacts
unearthed so far at Day's Knob have appeared mainly in these locations:
Along
the 130m (425') access path from the ridge road to the top of the
hill, after years of erosion and maintenance grading, from roughly
25 cm (10") to 60 cm (24") below the current terrain
surface. In
a large hole dug out by deer around a salt block at the top of the hill. In
several small test holes at random locations.
On and near the surface of the large earthwork along
the west side of the hill.
On and below the surface of a large artificially terraced area
including the spring on the steep east (sheltered) side of the hill. On
or near the surface, or eroding from banks in quarried or
otherwise disturbed areas of
the site. Characteristic artifact material has, in some cases,
been retrieved from far below the
current terrain surface. |
Most of the
artifacts collected at this site have been cataloged or at least sorted by the location of their
appearance, but a controlled dig remains to be com- pleted. One
1x1 m square was started in 2003, with lithic objects logged by XYZ
coordinates. This was left on hold, mainly because of
the large quan- tity of artifacts that suddenly appeared as the
result of heavy rains eroding the deeply rutted "driveway" up the hill,
requiring full-time attention. Although barely started, this square
has produced numerous clearly fabricated sand- stone objects, most of them
bearing the ubiquitous bird/human image.

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Day's
Knob would have been
highly favorable for habitation, with its commanding view in all
directions, ample
water supply, and abundant lithic material, and it clearly was the site of
much human activity. However, it is hardly
unique. There are undoubtedly many other such sites in North America waiting to be
discovered by professional or amateur archaeologists willing and able to see
beyond the current and rather rigidly orthodox paradigm for aboriginal
American artifacts. (Topper
in South Carolina is almost certainly such a site.) Many photos of similar artifact material,
resembling that here in minute detail, have been e-mailed to this
author. If one were given to wild speculation, one might present
the heretical hypothesis that North America was well populated before the advent of the
diagnostically
"Clovis" implements. One way or another, it is seems
likely that the ground of North America will yield quite a large body of
heretofore unrecognized artifact material related to but morphologically
distinct from that popularly seen as Native American. Following their discovery by the archaeological pioneer Boucher
de Perthes in the nineteenth century, simple figure stones have been
rejected and ignored by archaeologists despite forensically verified evidence of human agency.
This is a sad and almost inexcusable oversight given that figure
stones present an index to a site's early human presence where more
popularly recognized artifact material is not present. In short,
there is a lot more to all this than just "arrowheads". Note
to persons recognizing and collecting artifacts like those shown here
(or any other artifacts, for that matter!): Please record the
exact location of each find (a handheld GPS unit can be quite helpful in
this). Place the find in a plastic "zip-lock" bag along
with a note detailing its provenience. Context is very
important. If the artifact is damp, let it dry out before sealing
it in the the bag. If you think you must clean it, FIRST look under
magnification (at least 10X) for adhering material of interest.
For example, on
several occasions at this site human hairs
and dyed plant fibers (sometimes intertwined with the hairs) have been found in the encasing soil or attached to the stone, even well below the current
terrain surface. This is fragile evidence of something quite
interesting, and you wouldn't want to destroy it. Cleaning
the inspected artifact gently with a
soft-bristled brush and rinsing carefully with distilled or at
least clean water is
usually safe. Obviously, using anything like alcohol or
bleach as recommended by the make-believe "Portable Rock Art Museum" is a very bad idea.
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Please
email questions, comments, and flaming arrows to figurestones@gmail.com
And please note:
Being rather overwhelmed, I apologize for falling far behind in replying to and corresponding with the
many visitors who have submitted comments and questions. Your
input is welcome and valued, and I will try to catch up with all this. |
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Except for photos and
quotations from other
sources, the material presented on this website is exclusively the intellectual
property of the author. However, you are welcome
to share anything here if proper credit is given. ---- Copyright
2003-2023 ----
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Some
Interesting Links:
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