| Abstrakt: |
The Grand Meadow Chert Quarry (GMC Quarry) is the source of an exceptionally high-quality and distinctive chert used for making stone tools, employed over many millennia in the Upper Midwest. Grand Meadow Chert (GMC) occurs in limestone lag deposits at the edge of the Driftless Area in southeastern Minnesota and northeastern Iowa. GMC has been found at archaeological sites in 52 counties across Minnesota, as well as in western Wisconsin and northern Iowa. So far as is known, all GMC from those sites can be traced to this one quarry. At the quarry site, chert was extracted continuously over at least 8,000 years, as evidenced in its use among a range of diagnostic projectile points in numerous sites from the region. It is well represented in the Woodland Period, and there is a significant increase in its appearance in collections and excavations related to the Oneota villages on rivers in southern Minnesota, most notably as a favored material for making end scrapers. To extract the chert from the quarry site, Native Americans dug pits of varying sizes and depths, some as wide as 12 m and up to 3 m deep, through prairie soils and glacial till to reach a flat bed of nodules in limestone lag. Although only 88 intact pits and trenches remain within a small 8-acre (3 ha) woodlot, evidence in the surrounding fields indicates that the full site may have included many hundreds or thousands more. The intensive localized quarrying found at Grand Meadow is unique in Minnesota but is analogous to important regional toolstone sources such as the Silver Mound Quarry Complex for Hixton Silicified Sandstone in Wisconsin, and the Knife River Flint Quarries of North Dakota. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
