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Flint does not
appear naturally in the geology of the area (Guernsey County,
Ohio) in which Day's Knob
is located, and since this part of the state was not glaciated,
non-local flint could appear here without human involvement only
in the form of glacial outwash from far to the north. But
such outwash has not been seen in this county, and even at that,
the site described here is 90-120 m (300'-400') above creek beds
in which this might even possibly be present. It is
therefore assumed that flint objects were imported by early
inhabitants of the area, for whatever reason. Typically,
in the established American archaeological paradigm, this
material is thought to have been imported only in the form of
the popularly recog- nized "Indian" artifacts such as
points, blades, and scrapers, or as larger cores of raw material
for reduction to these utilitarian implements. Strangely,
only a very few scrapers and one pick made of flint have
appeared here among the many professionally verified artifacts
of other (mainly local) lithic material. Small con-
centrations of flint along with other
imported lithic material (including igneous and metamorphic)
have been found eroding from the surface near the spring on the
east (sheltered) side of the knob, mainly as pebbles,
often worked, usually not, or at least not obviously, the latter
falling into the category of "manuport", brought in
likely because of their novelty or their natural resemblance to
animal or more or less human faces. But at least one of the
flint pebbles shows clear signs of human modification, this
being the one shown immediately below: |
