The 3GA22 quarry has a wide variety of novaculite colors.
Mary Beth Trubitt mapping at 3GA22 in 2002.
Tyler Stumpf photographing outcrop at 3GA22.
Novaculite debris on surface at quarry.
Novaculite from Garland County, Arkansas
Quarry 3GA22
The 3GA22 novaculite quarry was recorded into the Arkansas archeological site files in 1969. It was first visited over a hundred years ago by William Henry Holmes, who described large pits, exposed rock faces, and a massive area of knapping debris that he called the "Great Workshop."
In 2002, Dr. Mary Beth Trubitt led a team from the Arkansas Archeological Survey, assisted by Arkansas Archeological Society volunteers and students from Henderson State University, in mapping quarry features at 3GA22 under an Archaeological Resources Protection Act permit. A detailed topographic map of a 5 hectare area was made, documenting aboriginal pits and trenches, worked and battered novaculite outcrops, and the concentrated area of exposed quarry debris, sandstone hammerstone fragments, and partly-shaped pieces of novaculite.
A 3-dimensional view of the main quarried ridge at 3GA22 was created by topographic mapping.
So much novaculite was quarried out of 3GA22 that the ridge crest has been noticeably altered, as can be seen in the 3-D map view. This quarrying activity took place over thousands of years. The style of a dart point fragment recorded from 3GA22 indicates use of this location at least during the Woodland period (ca. 650 B.C. – A.D. 950).
Large quarry pits have been documented at 3GA22.
The novaculite found at 3GA22 varies greatly in color, from white and tan (N9, 5Y 8/1), to red and pink (5RP 6/2, 10YR 7/4), to gray and black (N8, N3). Whites and reds are seen at the outcrops, while the massive amount of quarry debris found on the surface shows even more variability in color. Cortext varies slightly. Some samples show no cortex at all, others have a weathering rind, and a few show a white chalky cortex. The texture ranges from fine to medium. All of our quarry samples show matte/dull luster. Translucency of the 3GA22 samples proved difficult to measure, since the samples curated at the Arkansas Archeological Survey's Henderson State University Research Station are large fragments or chunks of rock rather than thin flakes.
Battered outcrops at 3GA22 show a range of novaculite colors.
Samples from 3GA22:
Click on these thumbnail photos to see the variety of colors and textures shown by novaculite from this quarry.
Read more about the 3GA22 novaculite quarry in these references:
You are seeing a preliminary version of this website. Thanks to a planning mini-grant from the Arkansas Humanities Council, we have created a 3-page prototype of the novaculite virtual comparative collection website. If you like what you see and think it would be useful to develop the full version, let us know!
For comments or further information on this website, please contact Mary Beth Trubitt, Arkansas Archeological Survey, mtrubit@uark.edu.
Website text and photographs created by Mary Beth Trubitt, Tyler Stumpf, and Vanessa Hanvey (Arkansas Archeological Survey, Arkadelphia). Website design and coding created by John Samuelsen (Arkansas Archeological Survey, Fayetteville). We thank Christopher Davies and Lydell Lively for their comments on this project.
This project is supported in part by a grant from the Arkansas Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Copyright 2012, 2013, Arkansas Archeological Survey
2475 North Hatch Avenue
Fayetteville, AR 72704
479-575-3556
arkarch@uark.edu
