What is this thing?

[barbarosa]

This came out of a friend's garden in TN. Seems to be polished (maybe river?) around the middle, but both ends have been pecked, except for a small section on one end (see 3rd pic). What is this?

[Mojave]

Good question...

[Cannonman17]

hammer stone.

[Indianasmith]

Exactly. A small hammerstone for percussion flaking.

[meetmaker]

One primitive way of working wood is to peck or hammer at to soften and lift the fibers. Then scrape that area clear with a piece of sharp tool stone. Repeat as needed. Your stone doesn't look as if was used to beat rock. The polish you mention around the middle, could it be from hafting, or hand use?

[comanche]

Meetmaker,,,that would be a Celt or Adze you are trying to describe.
A hammerstone is used for,,, Hard hammer precussion flaking.
This piece might have been a Pecking stone,,,,'////jmo.It is kinda small to be a Hammerstone/////c

[Cannonman17]

I don't think it's too small to be a hammer stone at all and I'll tell ya why. I've been a flintknapper for many years and only use traditional methods, old school style if you will, and through the years I've used dozens and dozens of hammer stones. I have found that depending on what stage you're at in the reduction or what you're trying to make, hammer stones of all sizes are needed. When doing primary reduction or getting spalls to work with I might use a hammer stone the size of a softball. When starting to actually work the piece and the primary reduction size I will frequently use a stone the size of a baseball and when you get down to the secondary reduction and all the percussion flaking leading right up to the use of antler for pressure flaking I use stones almost the exact same size as this piece, not very big at all. I'll even walk the plank here and go one step farther. By the looks of the amount of wear on this particular one I would guess that it was used to make one or two points at the most. Flintknapping is surprisingly hard on the hammer stones and will wear them down and give them flat spots pretty quickly. Of course, this could be a really hard stone for all I know and used for more than that but I'm judging that it's not super hard because of the size of the individual divits.

[comanche]

So to clairify ,,a pecking stone ,,would be secondary work,,,?
thanks

[Cannonman17]

No, a pecking stone is something completely unrelated to percussion flaking. I would say that this could have been used as a pecking stone but it doesn't have wear typical of that sort of thing IMO.

[comanche]

Thanks Cannonman,,, I got to watch more Knapping videos.
So pecking is not percussion?now I am confused,,,,c