No artifacts lately but I did find this chunk of chert with attached concretions at a 60 acre site in Surry county. I'm assuming this piece of rock traveled here by human hand. This is from the lower Piedmont of the James River in Virginia.
I thought that too ..... I had a mystery item a few months ago that looks identical to these and it’s was identified as English Flint ... you may Have been the one that Identified it for me
You now have 3 votes for ballast flint. There may be a whole pile of it where it was originally offloaded, which is probably along a shoreline where the ship/boat could have been anchored, and I would suspect there to have been numerous early sites where this could have happened along the James River. If you can locate the site, it would probably be an interesting site to metal detect too.
Unfortunately I no longer have access to the site. I'm stuck on a coastal job near the interstate now and all I'm finding is modern trash. Looking forward to some new topsoil soon.