(….reprinted from Bulletin of The Archeological
Society of New Jersey, No. 22, Nov. 1965)
AN ABORIGINAL QUARTZ
QUARRY
AT SAMP MORTAR RESERVOIR, FAIRFIELD, CONNECTICUT
By
Bernard W.
Powell
PREHISTORIC quartz quarries and
chipping stations are not commonly described from this area. One such is
here described, and the nature and extent of the workings are identified and
defined. Techniques of the ancient quarriers are inferred from the
excavated evidence, and a chronological placement is advanced.
THE SITE
Near
41' 11' 18” N. lat. and 73' 15' 48” W. Lon., north of Fairfield, Fairfield
County, Connecticut, on the west side of Samp Mortar Reservoir (Fig.
2), is a small aboriginal quartz quarry. The site lies about 1,500
feet south-southwest of the bridge where Black Rock Turnpike crosses the upper
end of the reservoir. A prominent rock escarpment strikes roughly southwest
here. At one spot along its edge occurs a group of glacial potholes;
erroneous attribution of these phenomena to the Indians may account for the area
name. Just east of the escarpment rises a small knoll at about 120 feet above sea
level. In heavy underbrush near the top of this knoll is an outcrop of
clean, massive, white quartz. Apparently, a major intrusion reaches the
surface here and was discovered and exploited by the aborigines long ago.
Local country rock is contorted gneisses and schists, presumably of the Hartland
Formation (Rodgers, Gates, et al.,1956). Detailed topographic relations
can be ascertained from the Westport Quadrangle of the U. S. Geological Survey
7.5 Minute Series.
It
is not wholly clear whether the intrusion penetrated a preexistent
fracture-and-fault system. However, many of the quartz pieces are quite
flat-sided, and it is postulated that at least some of the contacts in the veins
were along flat-faced breaks. Further, the intrusion is riven with smooth,
flat cracks. Some of these are roughly parallel and a foot or more
apart. The flat surfaces are coated with a very thin layer (2mm. or
less) of massive, black tourmaline. A mineralogist 1), has said this is
quite common where vein quartz cuts gneisses and schists. In my opinion,
the flat-sided nature of the quartz here was one of its most attractive
properties to the aborigines, as will be explained.
South
and slightly west of the outcrop are several large quartz boulders, some up to 6
feet through (Fig.
2). They lie at different radii to the outcrop, but their orientations
and distributions (none to east or north) strongly suggest glacial
action as the force which wrenched them loose from the outcrop and skidded them
to their present positions. Some are slightly embedded in soil; the largest
and most distant sits about 75 feet away on an exposed ledge. Though
weathered and stained, these erratics show signs of battering by the
quarriers of long ago.
Concentrations
of chips noted as weathering from the surface in the vicinity of these boulders
prompted several test pits (indicated
parenthetically as 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 in Fig. 2). These pits confirmed
presence of chipping refuse and a few partially worked pieces at some
depth. This material, plus the battering, is unmistakable evidence of
attention by the early quarriers at this hillside site, and the boulders are
therefore defined as part of the complex. But it is unquestionably at the
outcrop that the major evidences of aboriginal quarrying abound.
TRENCH A
Chipping
refuse and tailings littered the ground here. Accordingly, a test trench,
Trench A, was run through this area and into the knoll (Fig.
2). This disclosed the major quarrying station at this site. Both
plan and profile were plotted (Fig.
3). All materials hereinafter described come either from Trench A (and
the expanded headward extension of it as shown), or Trench B just to the
west. This subsidiary trench confirmed the general impression and
relationships noted in Trench A, and no plan or profile was made.
At the surface,
faint outlines of an ancient ditch or hollow were detected at the northern end
of Trench A. As can be seen, Trench A extends southward into the outcrop itself;
it is postulated that the faint outline relates to activities of the ancient
quarriers. In this respect, the depression is reminiscent of the ancient
quarries at renowned Flint Ridge, Licking County, Ohio, where I have traced
similar hollows in the vicinity of the outcrops.
Stratigraphy
seems to support this interpretation, for no obvious upsets or anomalies
occur. It should be noted, however, that there is a local rumor that some
rock shelters (numerous along the escarpment) were dug years ago by "college
students" - said to be from Yale. A search of the literature fails to
reveal any published material and a direct appeal to the Department of
Anthropology at Yale has gone unanswered, so this rumor remains unchecked.
If, however, excavators were active in the vicinity thirty or more years ago, it
is conceivable they may have dug here, and the soil today is reweathering back
to a "natural" profile. This, however, is thought to be quite unlikely, in
view of the numerous chipped and partially worked forms here, which surely would
not have been left in situ by any excavators.
The
"topsoil" at the site was really a deep layer of duff, whose lowest portions
only were sufficiently distintegrated to form a soil. This material filled
the hollow and lay over much of the outcrop. In places it could be bodily
lifted away, or rolled back like a rug, similar to a condition cited previously
by me at a wooded site some miles west of here (Powell, 1959).
Beneath this material, in most spots, lay the mass of the outcrop.
However, in some places (Fig.
3) this "topsoil” was underlain by tan, yellowish subsoil, presumably of the
B horizon. This was most noticeable in the northern half
of Trench A, and at several spots in the southern half, where this subsoil
filled crevices in the outcrop.
Despite
the profusion of chips observed at the surface, well over 90 percent of all
material recovered came from the subsoil. Much of this material was
concentrated along the fissures in the outcrop. As excavation proceeded,
the modus operandi of the quarriers became apparent. They had
concentrated their efforts along the natural fractures, and so, over the
millennia, had widened and deepened their workings. They worked on, over,
and through their own refuse, apparently stopping now and then to blank out
smaller pieces, losing some of them in the shuffle, breaking still others, and
withal continuing to pry out and remove large blocks along the
fissures. At least this is a composite guess based on the observed
situation.
Many
blocks occur at random over the site; a number of them lie just northeast of the
working face exposed in Trench A (Fig.
2) and were undoubtedly pitched there by the Indian miners.
Chips,
flakes, cores, tailings, blanks, and occasional worked pieces continued to the
deepest sounding made, and showed no noteworthy variation in intensity or
distribution. The deepest spot reached in our excavation was 18
inches below the datum plane AE (Fig.
3) and 30 inches below the original surface, since the ground here slopes up
to the top of the knoll. At this depth, many of the fissures pinched out
and ran together. It seems highly probable that chipping refuse and other
material occur to the bottom of every crack and cranny in the intrusion.
Difficulty of excavating along these narrow seams and low yield
of meaningful data precluded further investigation, but I am confident
our observations and inferences are substantially correct.
A
small ash lens was exposed on the east face of Trench A, not too far below the
surface in the northern end (Fig.
3). A badly fire-disintegrated piece of quartz lay in
conjunction with it. It is entirely possible, due to the shallowness
of this feature plus the fact that the only modern artifact at the site (a man's
corroded wrist-watch) was found at the surface here, that it dates from the
modern era. However, even if it dates to aboriginal times (no
sufficiently uncontaminated charcoal or organics could be obtained from
it), it probably does not relate to the quarrying operations. Use of
fire as a quarrying technique of early men has a dubious reputation in the
literature, and most authorities deny that it was ever used (Ellis, 1957).
An
apparent anomaly at the site is complete absence of any hammerstones or
mauls. The obvious intensity of the percussive activity here argues for
frequent loss and breakage of such tools. None were found, and there is no
ready explanation for their absence.
Description of Recovered
Materials
The
bulk of the material was strictly quarry trash and tailings. Nevertheless,
each piece was examined for what it could reveal about the activities that once
transpired here. In all, we recovered and examined over 500 pieces.
The sheer mass of this material dictated cataloguing as it was removed, and
leaving it in the field. Despite the intensity of the
industry here, few completely formed or finished pieces were found.
However, a number of blanks and a few rough artifacts permitting tentative
identification were recovered, and are described below.
Because
of the flat-sided nature of the quartz at Samp Mortar Quarry, described earlier,
the quarriers were able to secure a wide range of pieces having two roughly
parallel sides. These constituted natural cores, with ready-made striking
and anvil platforms. It was a simple matter to set such pieces down on a
nearby ledge, and begin at once to detach flakes through either direct or
indirect percussion. Analysis of the refuse leaves little doubt that this
was one of the main activities of the quarriers. Again and again we
noticed cores with marked ridges of percussion showing where the maximum number
of flakes had been drawn from the striking platform. When such a core was
inverted, it invariably showed one of the flat, tourmaline-coated faces downmost
as the anvil platform. On several of these exhausted cores, negative bulbs
of percussion could be traced around the periphery of the anvil platform, caused
by rebound forces transmitted back to the core when originally struck.
With
a little practice, one could pick up examples of this type of core very readily
in the tailings. The smallest in a series of thirty catalogued in the
field was 2 inches long; the largest was over 30 inches and required
two men to lift it.
The
adhering black tourmaline layer proved a boon in retrieving deliberately struck
flakes from among the trash. Many of these were quite large; some showed
angular detachment from the cores as shallow as 30 degrees, suggesting that very
oblique blows must have been delivered by the early knappers.
A
few of the more finished items, and pieces where two or more examples occur and
are thought to represent conceptual tool patterns, were photographed and are
shown in Plates II and III.
Plate
II A, a and b,
illustrate a repetitive type of fist-size chunk with rough percussion-chipped
edges around three-quarters of the perimeter and slight indenting or notching on
the lower edge. Specimen c has a nicely chipped curvate
cutting edge running up onto a prominent spur on the left edge. Other
examples of this form were noted in the field. Specimens d and e are, in
some sense, not unlike a form called the "Triangular Tailing-Breaker" described
by Fowler (1963) for steatite quarries in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
He believes it relates to Late Archaic times there. Many examples of the schist
"blades" f and g, some perhaps natural and not man-made, occurred at Samp
Mortar. These were the only artifacts noted that were not made of quartz.
Since many ledges of schist abound nearby, the quarriers may well have spent
some time roughing out these blades. One can only speculate as to their
use, however, since the soft micaceous schist would not stand up to much hard
service. The polls of h and i are broken off, but the worked bits along
their lower edges indicate they were crude celts of the plano-convex
variety. Their breakage and loss at the site might suggest they were
actually quarry tools, but this seems uncertain.
In
Plate
II B are three large blades or blade-blanks. Numerous examples of this
form were noted at the quarry. Probably one attractive aspect to a quarry
source for quartz is that large, uniform pieces of stock could be obtained. This
was not possible with a regional pebble industry, which nonetheless may have
been contemporary with the quarry industry. Doubtless such pieces were
later modified into large hide-scrapers, choppers, and blades of all types, and
perhaps into hoes and agricultural tools of later peoples too, but no finished
items were found here. All are bifacially flaked from both edges, which
left them with medial ridges of percussion. Two, b and c, may show
incipient stem formation. In Plate
III, a may be a hand-held pick, possibly a quarry pick. The specimens
b-h suggest projectile-point blanks, but some may be purely fortuitous, since
all are very roughly percussion struck. Two, band d, may be blanks for
triangular forms; c does suggest specifically a side-notched blank, and has a
marked similarity to the illustrated type Brewerton Side-Notched, described by
Ritchie (1961) mainly for sites of the Middle Archaic horizon in New York. The
relatively narrow-bladed blanks e-h may be Lamokoid in concept, and might also
be generally thought to relate to Archaic times. The semilunate
knives (or scrapers) in the series i-m seem a well-enough defined group. They
are like many such forms described from sites, generally Archaic, in the
Northeast. Fowler (1963) describes a "Stemless Knife" whose general criteria
match those of this series; he assigns it mainly to the Late Archaic in
Massachusetts. A drawing in a letter 2 illustrates a strikingly similar artifact
from the Christiana stone bowl quarry in Pennsylvania. Specimen i in this series
comes from Bitter Rock Shelter about 10 miles west of Samp Mortar Quarry
(Powell, MS). It occurred near the bottom of a relatively deep
stratigraphic deposit there, and is interpreted by me to be Archaic in that
context. Its similarity to the Samp Mortar series is quite apparent.
Specimens n and o are rather undistinguished and perhaps deserve no special
comment.
Discussion
At
some point in postglacial time, Amerinds discovered and began to work a quartz
outcrop and associated boulders several miles inland from the southern
Connecticut seacoast. Sharp cultural or temporal diagnostics are wanting,
but several tentatively identified artifact forms fall generally in the
Mid-to-late Archaic Period, so it is postulated that initial quarrying here
began perhaps 4,000-5,000 years B.P.
Observations
of the outcrop itself, and of the tailings, cores, and blanks support the
inference that the ancient quarriers concentrated mainly on breaking out large
pieces of quartz along natural cracks. Rough flake scars and negative
bulbs of percussion, many still traceable on working faces in situ at the
quarry, suggest that percussive methods of extraction were paramount.
Presence of numerous cores with naturally formed striking and anvil platforms is
advanced as one of two main reasons the aborigines chose to work this
site. The other is thought to be availability of large, flat, homogeneous
pieces of quartz, typified by the "quarry blades" shown in Plate
II B.
Presence
of some secondary chipping (Plate
II A, c, h. i), plus immense quantities of chipping debris, indicate that
primary extraction was not the sole aim of the quarriers. However, no
finely finished pieces, and no hammerstones were recovered. This may
mean the quarriers carefully removed their finished pieces and their tools
elsewhere. In the case of the hammerstones, it is not clear how such
substantial percussive activity can have transpired without loss or breakage of
hammerstones (and other recognizable quarry tools) in some quantity at the site.
The
quarry may have been visited and worked by people from distant areas who carried
their blanked-out pieces away with them, a phenomenon cited not infrequently in
the literature. The quarry may also have been worked by local people,
perhaps even occupants whose remains (by rumor) are said to have occurred in
nearby rock shelters. A. quick survey suggests that these shelters are too
disturbed to yield much meaningful data. Nothing is known of any inventories
assembled from these shelters, but it is said that ceramics were found in one
instance. Marine shell fragments also occur at one of these shelters. One
small scrap of marine shell (Venus mercenaria) was found at the surface in
Trench B at the quarry, but it is entirely unclear whether this is ancient or
modern, and whether it was left here by the Indians, or perhaps carried up here
by rodents, carnivores, or other scavengers who may have disturbed the
accumulations in the rock shelters. Perhaps only the two trianguloid projectile
point blanks Plate III ( b,
d) relate to Indians of ceramic times; it seems quite possible that quarrying
had ceased here prior to the Woodland Period.
The
tourmaline-coated, flat-base cores might be detectable at more remote sites, but
their uniqueness as coming only from Samp Mortar Quarry seems challenged by
expert opinion that vein quartz in this condition is relatively common in
regions of gneissic rocks.
Acknowledgments
I
thank my co-worker at the site, Mr. Ted Jostrand of Norwalk, for his assistance in
the field; also Mr. David M. Seaman, Department of Mineralogy, American Museum
of Natural History, New York, for comment on samples of the quartz submitted to
him; and finally to representatives of The Greenfield Development Company for
permission to make our investigation.
Footnotes
1 David M. Seaman, personal
communication.
2 William S. Fowler, personal
communication.
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END