A New Year's Eve (Day) Exploration - Dec 31, 2018 This bowl quarry-workshop is located in an area of many large soapstone boulders.   The site was almost lost to development, but (fortunately for preservation, in this case) the last recession put a halt to those plans. (This site is on private property; previously known as the Hulsey site.)

Boulder 1, with numerous bowl preforms and bowl removal scars.

Boulder 1 - bowl preform. Note the unusual "cupule" in the center of what would eventually be the bottom of this bowl.

Boulder 1 - bowl preform. This bowl also had a cupule in the center of the bowl's bottom.

Boulder 1 - bowl removal scar

Large flat-topped soapstone boulder On a subsequent visit, we observed that a section of this rock had been sawed off at some time. See two photos further down on page...

Another large, creviced boulder The property owners said that this boulder once held many stones that had been placed in the various cracks & crevices. A variety of small rocks, including quartz, soapstone, gneiss, and others, lies around the base of the boulder.

Large soapstone overhang - rock shelter

Balancing soapstone boulder You can see where this area had been completely cleared for the now defunct subdivision...

Bowl preform on Boulder 2

Boulder 2 - same bowl preform from another angle.

Boulder 3 - bowl removal scar

I think these striations resulted from mechanical equipment moving this boulder.

Later in January 2019, I made a return visit, accompanied by Alan C.:

We noticed that one boulder exhibited a flat planar surface with saw marks.

This indicated that, at some point, a portion of the rock had been removed. The missing piece may well have contained an example of Native American rock art.

Near Boulder 1, we uncovered a shallow boulder which contains at least three bowl removal scars.

At Boulder 3, Alan noticed an additional bowl scar beneath the previously documented scar.

Adjacent to Boulder 3, I noticed a rock with a protruding bowl scar at ground level.

This rock (Boulder 4) also contains an attached preform.

We found a pair of broken preforms at the upper area.

This one had an especially smooth finished exterior.

In June, the property owner notified me that she had been digging around the base of Boulder 1 with her young son, and made an interesting discovery:

A few images of Boulder 1 showing the homeowner's excavations.

This is the same quarried boulder shown at the top of this page...

Nice discovery! - A grooved stone axe head Found below the preform seen near ground level in the first photo of Boulder 1..

Click here for a rendering of the soapstone bowl production process.

All Text & Images: Copyright 2018-2019.