>>2753162this summer, i started going reguarly to alibates flint quarry; to clarify, only the land surrounding it you're free to visit (canadian river). you cannot go on the land marked on the map without a ranger as it's fenced off, but you are still free to explore the surrounding areas which are filled with siliceous rock; the reason the national monument is fenced off is due to the few in-tact remains of the ice age clovis culture, as well as of other indians who settled there during the medieval period. i haven't been fortunate enough to find an arrowhead or an artifact nearby, but that dream quickly faded once i began to look for rocks. this is one of the first pieces i found atop one of the mesas that made me come back again pretty much every week since i originally went out. if anyone could give me some advice on how to clean the dirt off of the crystals without breaking them i'd much appreciate it.
since there is no strict definition of how flint is formed, it made me very interested in trying to find out for myself. i'll post a few examples after, but a majority of what i've found shows obvious signs of at one point being entirely crystaline, to the point where the flint creates an image of crystals in the rock as material came in and filled the rest of it. when the rock the flint formed in didn't do so evenly between two layers, it creates fractal patterns that are immensely beautiful.
>>2769035in my experience, this appears to be from natural erosion. i have some pieces i'll post that are very similar in nature, that while aren't obviously knapped they could be mistaken for a human made tool, or could be picked up directly off the ground and used as a tool immediately - it's no wonder that humans began to pick these rocks up first to be used as toolheads. without a shot in the light to show conchoidal fracturing though, it's very hard to make out any other details, but this could've been used as a skinning tool.
