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3 Stone Raw Materials This chapter brie®y describes the stone types found in the Hardaway assemblage; possible source locations of these raw materials are also noted. Broadly speaking, the raw materials identi¤ed here can be divided into four stone types: metavolcanic and metasedimentary stone, chert, and quartz. The chert and quartz categories re®ect current archaeologically recognized raw material types, but the metavolcanic and metasedimentary stone types de¤ned here are somewhat new (cf. House and Wogaman 1978:51–57; Novick 1978). Of particular interest is the metavolcanic stone commonly called rhyolite . Rhyolite dominates the Hardaway assemblage (Chapter 4) and outcrops near the site in the southern Uwharrie Mountains. A quarry survey was performed in the Uwharries as a part of this project. Approximately twenty-seven quarries were located and were sampled for petrologic analysis (Daniel and Butler 1991, 1996). In sum, our survey work has located and petrologically characterized approximately twenty-seven quarries in or adjacent to the Uwharrie Mountains. Pinpointed among these sites was the location of the dark gray, aphyric, and often ®owbanded rhyolite so abundant in the Hardaway assemblage. In addition, the sources of three porphyritic rhyolite types present in the assemblage were also located. These rhyolite sources near Hardaway appear to be microscopically , if not macroscopically, distinct from a series of additional stone sources at the northern end of the Uwharries, which for the most part can be classi¤ed as rhyolitic tuffs. A signi¤cant percentage of the tools from Hardaway appear to have been made from tuffs, but whether they came from these sources is unclear. In any event, it appears that Morrow Mountain was the most intensively exploited source in the region during the Early Archaic. This work provided the basis for the identi¤cation of the metavolcanic and metasedimentary stone types summarized below. A brief discussion of the geologic setting of the Uwharrie Mountains precedes the raw material descriptions. GEOLOGIC BACKGROUND The Carolina Slate Belt consists of metavolcanic and metasedimentary rocks extending approximately 600 km from Virginia to Georgia; it has a maximum width of about 140 km in central North Carolina (Butler and Secor 1991:66). The rocks were formed as a result of the eruptions of a chain of volcanic islands surrounded by shallow seas during the Precambrian period. The lava, ash, and sediment deposited by these eruptions were later metamorphosed, folded, and faulted, so that they were exposed to the erosion that eventually formed the present land surface of the Uwharrie Mountains. Although the Uwharries are called mountains, they are actually inselbergs , being the erosional remnants of an ancient and higher Miocene peneplain (Kesel 1974). By the start of the Pliocene epoch, streams ®owing east across the Piedmont from the newly formed Continental Divide had altered the nearly level surface of the peneplain and had exposed the more resistant rock as elevations. Thus, while the rocks comprising the Uwharries are several hundred million years old, the erosion that created them is actually relatively young, geologically speaking. Topography Today, the Uwharries consist of a loosely de¤ned, narrow chain of mountains approximately 46 km long between Badin and Asheboro in Stanly, Montgomery, and Randolph Counties. As identi¤ed on U.S. Geologic Survey (USGS) topographic maps, the northern end of this chain borders the eastern edge of the Uwharrie River and a major tributary, Caraway Creek, near Asheboro in Randolph County. The mountain range then crosses the Uwharrie River and, bordering the river’s western edge in Montgomery County, eventually terminates near Badin in Stanly County at the river’s con®uence with the Yadkin. The Uwharries tend to range from 150 m to 300 m in elevation and have hilly peaks, narrow ridge crests, and steep slopes. They account for signi¤cant portions of both Uwharrie National Forest and Morrow Mountain State Park (¤gure 3.1). Geology The Albemarle-Asheboro area forms one of the best known geologic regions of the Carolina Slate Belt (e.g., Butler 1986; Butler and Secor 1991, Stone Raw Materials 39 Conley 1962; Harris and Glover 1988; Milton 1984; Seiders 1981). Three geologic formations compose the Uwharries: the Uwharrie, Tillery, and Cid formations (Butler and Secor 1991:¤gure 4-5). The exact age and geologic relationship of some of these formations have been the subject of recent debate (J. Robert Butler, personal communication 1992), but they can be generally described as follows. The Uwharrie formation, which is the oldest of the three, represents the northern half of the Uwharries. It is...

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