Earth & Sky

The following individuals were interviewed for today’s show. Our thanks to:

Ann Early
Archaeologist
Arkansas State University

Meeks Etchieson
Forest Archeologist
USDA Forest Service
Ouachita National Forest

Helpful web sites:

Prehistoric Novaculite Quarries in the Ouachita Mountains (USDA Forest Service)

Pictures of novaculite quarries (USDA Forest Service)

Author’s Notes:
These prehistoric quarries were first discovered by William H. Holmes in the late 19th century. They are difficult to get to – and difficult to study. Even today, some sites have not been touched. Some quarries on private lands have been completely destroyed.

For people thousands of years ago, the process of quarrying was variable depending on the access. In some places they could hack off pieces of rock, but in others they had to chisel down or follow a deposit into the heart of the mountain. One site is known where they chipped right through the end of the mountain like a prow of a ship. Some places that were quarried for many years look like a big hole in the ground with waste materials heaped all around them and in the hole.

Once a chunk was broken off, one technique was to break the novaculite into pieces twice the size of your hand, and then to shape very simply into leaf-shaped, hand -size rough pieces. During some eras, those pieces were then heat treated. Novaculite is very brittle, and its structure can be changed by heating and cooling it. Early people are believed to have dug a hole, lit a fire and buried the rock with the fire. If a piece survived the heat treating, then it was more desirable as a future tool. It was probably preferable to do that testing on site than carrying untested rocks off the mountains.

After testing, the rocks were carried downstream to settlements and campsites. Today, these campsites can be found in a wide fan on these rivers. Hundreds of thousands of pieces of novaculite can be found there as well, revealing how much work took place over thousands of years.

Interview with Ann Early, Arkansas State Archeologist, April 18, 2001

ES: What’s the most interesting thing about the quarries?

AE: A couple of things make them unique. One is the quirk of geology. Ancient forces caused the formation of this very thick layer of silica rock. Subsequent forces broke and shoved those layers straight up. The ridges and tops of the hills are vertically tilted bedrock. When you walk on top you are standing on virtually an endless supply of rock suitable for making tools.

Indians discovered this bedrock source as long as 7000 years ago and began to mine it. Over the course of the next 5-6,000 years, hundreds of tons of rocks were mined using simple tools and technology. The ribbon of rock is over 200 miles long. Along the way are hundreds of places where the rocks were broken off and taken to be formed into tools and traded.

We believe this is the biggest system of prehistoric quarries in North America. There are billions of pieces of this rock chipped off and now strewn across the landscape. There is literally a carpet of novaculite pieces of tools that extends from the mountains of Arkansas to Louisiana-passed from hand to hand and traded. The scale of extraction is awesome, when you count the number of quarries-some are 25 feet deep and 100 feet across, and are filled with broken debris today. We don’t know how deep they go. We have found nearly 100 quarries and there must be 100s more. They represent an enormous collective effort of people over thousands of years. They also represent a great body of knowledge about stone age people in North America.”

ES: How can you tell how old the worked stone is?

AE: Early explained they have to find the finished tools to be able to date the era, or get the age from campsites by sampling charcoal from fires. The flakes themselves cannot be dated with current technology.

ES: Why did the quarrying taper off?

AE: The main reason novaculite was mined was to make spear points and other cutting, scraping implements. The active period stretched from 7,000 years ago up until 1500 years ago., Then native people turned exclusively to bows and arrows instead of spears. Arrow points are tiny and can be tipped with materials other than novaculite. They also may have spent more time harvesting, cultivating with less need for the implements. Era? Archaic is older than 4000 years ago. Woodland period or lifeway dates from 4000 years ago until 800-1000 AD. After that was the Mississippian period.

ES: Was there anything else that attracted stone age people to the quarry sites?

AE: This bedrock formation also contained other stuff that was of use to native peoples. There were crystals, other minerals, chert, shales, etc that were also in the locality and were probably exploited. We don’t know much about that.

ES: How important do you think novaculite was as a trading item?

AE: Early explained that although novaculite appeared to have been trading widely, it was not a necessity because other peoples had their own sources for making spear points and tools. “ People trade things as much for the social value as the economic necessity,” she said. “ Think about gift giving. We give not just because people need things, but for the social cement.”

ES: How does the novaculite source compare to other sources?

AE: There are many other quarries in North America for soapstone, flint and other rock, but the novaculite quarry system is the most extensive grouping in North America. “ We’ve asked a number of other investigator and we have something really big here in Arkansas.”

April 17, 2001 Interview with Meeks Ethieson, USDA Forest Service, Ouachita National Forest, Forest Archeologist

ES: What makes the ancient people’s work here particularly interesting?

ME: They were both miners and engineers. They had to have some knowledge of mining. They would have had to build scaffolding to reach the best rock. Much of the rock was found in steep bluffs. They also made good use of natural fractures in rock to get into the solid high quality rock.

ES: Explain what’s so special about novaculite as a material for spear points and tools? Is it like obsidian?

ME: Novaculite is sedimentary and not volcanic. Obsidian is a volcanic glass. The basic properties for flaking are similar. Colors range from white to gray to black and actually can be any color.

ES: How can you tell you are looking at a prehistoric quarry?

ME: You look for broken-out eroded places on the sides of the mountaintops, If you look at the debris-the waste material left over-and hit a piece with a hammer, you will get a distinctive fracture pattern that you wouldn’t get with natural causes. This shows the debris had been mined. The debris piles can be 6-8 feet deep.

ES: What kind of mining tools did they leave behind?

ME: They used hammer stones. You will find a lot of them and fragments of hammer stones too. The hammerstones were sandstone or volcanic stones that are more typical from the creek bottoms.

ES: How unusual is it to find novaculite?

ME: Novaculite is part of a certain outcropping in the Ouachita mountains. The only other major source is in the Big Bend area of Texas.

ES: What makes the best quality novaculite to quarry?

ME: The rock must be glassy..the more glassy, the better you can control the way it flakes. You don’t want it grainy or fractured. That’s why quarrying is better than finding the rock washed down stream bed.

ES: How did they transform novaculite into spear points and other tools?

ME: They used hammers made of sandstone or hard quartzite. Then, for the final details they would use the butt end of a deer antler, and finally the tines from deer antlers for pressure flaking.

ES: So the native Americans who quarried the novaculite had a valuable trade item in that region?

ME: Yes. We don’t know much about the trade networks yet, but we do know tools and weapons made of novaculite showed up in Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. We think the major rivers probably served as transportation routes.

ES: Can people visit the quarries?

ME: We don’t have public areas yet, but would like to see interpretation there. The challenge is that most sites are hard to get to. They’re accessible only on foot and are high on mountain tops.

ES: Are there other sites like this around the country?

ME: Yes. Any place where you could chip and make stone tools, people would quarry it. There is one national monument called Alibates National Monument in Texas Panhandle. Some quarries are similar to what we see here, but mostly quarrying took place from the surface going down, versus quarrying into the sides of mountains. Where they quarried from the surface, they tended not to go very deep, since the material was spread thinly.