used for what

[jmfg222]

smooth as marbles and about the same size.were they used for some type of game.

 

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[Airborne80]

I have two Revolutionary war era marbles that look just like those. Are they fired clay? If so....... that would be my guess.

 

[SoIll]

Gameballs

 

[jeff a]

clay marbles,ive found a few ,found one that had a hand painted flower on it

 

[The Grim Reaper]

Actually, it depends on where they were found. If they came from around a known village site or from an old early settler site then they could be Clay Marbles, though they aren't shaped very well and aren't very round. My guess is they are what is used to take the burrs off of metal parts. We find these quite often around my area and I used to pick them all up until I took them to a show and had numerous people tell me what they were. A few of them look like they could be Marbles though, especially the smaller, darker colored ones.

 

[Ohio_Doug]

Look like deburring stones to me, sorry but those are not artifacts IMO.

 

[Carolina Points]

Most of the time the colored marbles/games stones red, yellow ,blue, green clay are Rev. War artifacts in s.c I have some gaming stones that are like these here and they were found on a known site here in s.c but you never know what you have b/c they favor each other so much.
Clint

 

[SwampHunter]

There is one place that was a swamp with a small creek running through it. Near the creek in the middle of the swamp is a mound. There has never been a house place for at least a mile from the mound. Not too long ago the swamp was drained and they started farming the land including the mound. The mound produces these game pieces along with other Indian artifacts. I have detected all over that mound and the only thing I found was a spindle from a modern combine and a large bolt from machinery. I do alot of metal detecting and run my metal detector over all of the Indian sites that we hunt. We sight find clay game pieces on several Indian sites where we never find any metal objects that would lead us to believe that the sites were used for any other reason than Indians and farming. I am going to say that these could be game pieces since we find them in the areas that we find them. We do find clay marbles at old house sites, but you know the house sites because of the type of debris.

 

[Cannonman17]

Look like deburring stones to me, sorry but those are not artifacts IMO.

and/or marbles, I would agree. Don't see the natives making a lot of things out of high quality white clay, nothing that I can think of recently in fact. If the Natives made /used them I would expect to find them made from local clays, be grit or grog or even shell tempered.

 

[SoIll]

Native gameballs are stone. I've never seen a clay one.

 

[EDDE]

i have 5 of the same kind they are stone not clay
i found them along the river here local when on a boat trip
they are the lighter color type the large and small on the left bottom

 

[jeff a]

here are some i found on fleabay

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230315499128
and a website on their history
http://www.akronmarbles.com/collectors_history.htm

 

[SwampHunter]

So why would we find them in the locations that we find them? We have all sorts of clay here. We also have no native rock here, yet we find chert/flint/stone tools all of the time. There have even been copper items found here, yet there is no natural copper for hundreds of miles from here. Same thing with Quartz. It is possible that Indians would trade clay(or finished pieces) just like they traded materials and other items.

 

[jeff a]

no way of telling how things end up where they do,i found a 1857 penny on an archaic site once,just happened to be lost on a site,kids lose alot of things over the years,could have been kids camping out and they lost some marbles,i know when i was a kid we made forts out in the woods ,if some one took a metal detector out to some of the fort sites they would probably find old money and some glass marbles,we shot them out of slingshots,now if we happened to build our forts on a prehistoric site there might be arrowheads also

 

[pippinwhitepaws]

trade routes are one of anthropologists great mysteries. when objects are found out of context, it just increases the mystery.
the pueblos have stories of runners covering 200 miles a day. one hopi runner was documented running from the hopi mesas to the sante fe rail line to watch the train pass every day...a total of about 100+ miles a day...and still was home for dinner.

 

[SwampHunter]

No doubt that kids could have lost marbles on Indian sites, but that is not to say that the Indians didn't make gaming pieces out of clay in the marble shapes. I don't know of anyone that was alive when there were Indians in my area so it's hard to know the truth. Really simple shape out of an available material. About like the clay pottery that we find.