Making Pictures in Stone: American Indian Rock Art of the Northeast

Decorated Tablets, Pebbles, and Cobbles

8 Decorated Tablets, Pebbles, and Cobbles Engraved stones occur throughout the northeast woodlands.They are decorated tablets, small slabs, pebbles, or cobbles of sandstone, siltstone, steatite, shale, slate, or other rock materials. Their designs are often obscure and difficult to describe, explain, and understand because they are nonrepresentational ,or the objects are broken.Geometric and abstract decorations are often present,such as parallel or diagonal lines,crosses,X’s,cross-hatching,ladders, rayed arcs,zigzags,circles,rayed circles,rectilinear patterns,or superimposed lines. The incising on these stones is sometimes deep and clear but at other times it is so fine it is difficult to see. In sum, they present a challenge for researchers to comprehend and interpret. Incised Tablet (Figure 82) A slate tablet decorated with incised lines on both of its surfaces was recovered from a prehistoric cremation burial at the West Ferry site located on Conanicut Island in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island. The tablet is roughly rectangular in shape and measures 13.4 cm (51 /8 inches) in length and 8.3 cm (33 /16 inches) in width.It is decorated with a bewildering array of incised lines and scratches. The stone, although generally flat and smooth in appearance, shows evidence of flaking or exfoliation on both surfaces. The tablet was found in cremation burial G-1, a bowl-shaped pit that contained human bone fragments and teeth, two steatite bowls, stone tools, graphite and red ochre pigment, flakes, two body ornaments (a gorget and small steatite pendant; see Figure 60), and the slate tablet illustrated and discussed here.Analysis of the human bone fragments suggested that a child and one adult had been cremated and buried within the pit (Simmons 1970:12, 13, 16–26). On the basis of two radiocarbon dates from charcoal found in the pit, this feature with its contents was dated to the Terminal Archaic period or ca. 3350 years b.p. Decorated Tablets, Pebbles, and Cobbles / 151 Incised grids, ladders, straight or curved parallel lines, and cross-hatching are common decorative motifs found on portable petroglyphs recovered in the northeast woodlands.TheWest Ferry site tablet is unique because the incised lines are random, vary in length, and some are curved, others straight, some oblique,and all overlapping.They are not patterned;no geometric form is apparent on the stone. Simmons (1970:20) stated that the object’s function “is unknown, but it does not appear to be utilitarian.” There appears to be a tiny circular pit on one side of the stone, which suggests that an attempt was Figure 82. Decorated tablet from the West Ferry site on Conanicut Island, Rhode Island. Source:Simmons 1970:26. 152 / Chapter 8 made to drill a hole but was abandoned. Perhaps it was intended to be a pendant or gorget. Incised Stone from Mashipicong Island (Figure 83) Archaeological evidence of Early Archaic period occupation (ca. 4500 b.p.– 6500 b.p.) was uncovered at the Rockelein site located on Mashipicong Island in the upper Delaware River valley of Sussex County, New Jersey. Members of the Incorporated Orange County Chapter,NewYork State Archaeological Association conducted excavations at this deeply stratified site in the 1970s. The excavations recovered “significant quantities of Early Archaic material,” including such projectile point types as LeCroy bifurcated base, Eva,and Stanly/Neville (Dumont and Dumont 1979:42).Three separate loci of Early Archaic occupation were identified at the site. A uniquely decorated artifact, an unworked and naturally shaped rectangular slate tablet, was recovered from Locus 3 at the southeastern end of the excavated portion of the site.It was recovered at a depth of 1.4 m (55 inches) below the surface in “association with a small group of pits containing carbonized nutshells and surrounded by implements relating to the processing of nutmeats” (Dumont and Dumont 1979:50).The decorated slate tablet measures 8.3 cm (31 /8 inches) in length, 4.7 cm (113 /16 inches) in width, and .6 cm (¼ inch) thick and is rounded at each corner. The tablet contains finely incised decorations on both sides. Side one has three distinct design motifs:the bottom portion of the stone is covered with closely spaced cross-hatched lines while the upper section has numerous oblique and horizontal lines.There is a horizontal band about 7 mm (¼ inch) wide that separates the two zones described above.Within this band are four contiguous incised triangles. The reverse side of the stone contains several randomly spaced vertical and horizontal lines. A similarly...