Treasures From Kathy’s Farm	by Chris Cramer
Central States Archaeological Societies 2022 April Journal	Red Creek, New York

Two views of the head of the broken birdstone.

Kathy still lives in the family homestead established by her grandfather, who found dozens of Native American artifacts as he farmed land on the north shore of Conesus Lake - the western most of New York’s Finger Lakes. As she picked dirt encrusted pieces out of cardboard boxes and laid them out on her kitchen table, Kathy told me she played with these fifty years ago as a child and remembers them as never being quite clean.

Of those I acquired, the most striking may be the 2” by 2” head portion of a porphyry birdstone (Fig. 1). It’s remarkably smooth and colorful lithic surface, overall symmetry and sharply defined curves, demonstrate the work of a supremely talented ancient artist. Kathy’s Conesus Lake farm is only two hundred miles from the Lambton County, Ontario site where the “Lulu” porphyry birdstone was found, as described in the October 2021 Central States Archeological Journal (Beer 2021). Could they have a shared history, even if just tangentially?

Kathy’s family collection also included a garnetiferous gneiss winged bannerstone (Fig. 2). About 5.5” by 2”, this form is thought by some to have been made to resemble the plumage and silhouette of raptors in flight (Rataul 2006). About 60 whole or fragmentary examples are known to exist in New York State museum collections, most from the Mohawk River area of eastern New York. The notable archeological excavation of the Bent Site on the Mohawk River found a number of winged bannerstones made of garnetiferous gneiss; that site was dated at 3500 to 3900 BP (Ritchie and Funk 1973). Although garnetiferous gneiss is very uncommon in the Finger Lakes region of New York, there is a known source located only a few miles from Kathy’s homestead (Rataul 2006).

The third amazing artifact from Kathy’s family collection is ...

 

Read the complete "Treasures From Kathy’s Farm" column in the Central States Archaeological Societies 2022 April Journal which can be purchased on-line after March 2022