by Jeffery Steiner, Plymouth, Wisconsin
Spade found in a cache near Wickliffe Mounds, in Ballard County, Kentucky. It is one of eleven found buried together, and was never utilized, as it shows no polish. It is made from Mill Creek chert and measures a fraction more than 12 inches in length. Collection of the author.
Mississippian spades are very interesting, large stone tools crafted by Mississippian artisans mainly for the purpose of digging and loosening soil for farming of corn and other crops of the time period. Hoes and spades increased productivity, allowing for the planting of extensive fields of crops such as corn. This in turn, led to more available food for those living in Mississippian villages. Certainly other uses would have been the digging of cache pits, storage pits, graves, or grubbing for roots. The spade was also a tool to soften the earth and soil for filling baskets of dirt for the mound building process.
The crops were generally tended by women of the society. The fields of the Mississippian Indians looked quite different from those we see today; beans, corn, squash, and other crops grew alongside each other. This was an efficient use of land because the corn stalks would provide shade for the lower crops and acted as supports or stakes for the beans to wind around.
Spades were made out of a variety of cherts such as Burlington, Kaolin, Crescent, and La Moine. Chert and limestone are found in the Cahokia area. In southern Illinois, Mounds and Dongola chert were used. On the outlying area of the Mississippian occupation, less desirable material like sandstone, limestone, and certain igneous and metamorphic materials were used. Note that all of these materials combined only accounted for about three percent of all known hoes and spades.
The two cherts that were most commonly used are 1. Dover chert, which is found near Stewart County, Tennessee, and 2. Mill Creek chert, the quarry being located in Union County, Illinois. More spades were made from Mill Creek chert than any other material. It is a tabular chert and one of the toughest cherts around, precisely why Mississippian agriculturists prized it. A weak chert would chip when used in the soil. Heat treated chert would chip easily, so raw Mill Creek, which was found in thinner, flatter nodules, was preferred. This raw material was so desired that some of the open pits were dug to a depth of 10-20 feet and a width from 12-40 feet. Mill Creek is found in slabs from two to five inches thick and up to two feet long and one foot wide. This made it ideal for use in the manufacturing of larger flint items. It is well known that Mississippian sites are near the present surface, so the cultivation and plowing of modern farm fields brought these large chert implements to the surface.
Spades and hoes were found in large numbers in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Their large size and shiny bits made them easy to find in fields where the early collectors and curious farmers picked them up.
Spades were found over a large area covering 200,000 square miles. Most spades were recovered in the Illinois and Missouri counties nearest to Cahokia. They have also been found as far north as the Aztalan area of southern Wisconsin. Some have been found in eastern Ohio and west to eastern Oklahoma. Spades have been found usually one at a time, rarely in a cache or large group. There are many documented caches, with the largest containing 50 notched hoes and 25 spades. The type of spades found would have a highly polished bit from use as though a coating of clear nail polish has been applied.
The polished surface is caused from the cutting of plants that form a buildup of a material called Opal Phytolith. Certain other spades show no use at all. The corn and other crops produced with these tools fed many thousands of people for well over two hundred years. One should never underestimate the ingenuity of ancient man for the invention of these unique and fascinating artifacts, because they helped immensely with the livelihood of their culture.
Above: A flair-Bit style spade made from a highly colorful Mill Creek chert. It was found by Mark Harris near the town of Dyersburg in Crittenden County, Kentucky. It has a high polish that extends just along the edge of the bit. It measures 9 1/4 inches in length.
Below: An extremely large Mill Creek chert spade measuring 13 3/4 inches in length, found in Livingston County, Kentucky, by Raleigh Johnson
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Dover Spades – Above left: A “paddle” style spade made from a chocolate Dover chert. It exhibits a near glass-like high polish over nearly half of its surface, which measures 8 inches in length. It was found on the Ledbetter Site in Livingston County, Kentucky. Above right: A V-shaped spade of grey Dover chert found in Montgomery County, Tennessee. It too has high bit polish and also measures 8 inches in length.
Dr. Michael Gramly wrote the definitive work on the Dover quarry, Prehistoric Lithic Industry at Dover, Tennessee, published in 1992. The back of the book featured a large spade found in the archaeological excavations at the site. In the picture above, the actual quarry site is behind the group that Dr. Gramly is speaking to. As one walks the site, large pieces of flint are everywhere. Some of the nodules are incredibly large, which would have been necessary in spade manufacturing. The Mississippians rolled the nodules quite a distance down the valley to sites where stone knappers lived and manufactured a wide variety of tools. It was obviously a large scale operation, since the ground was covered with debitage more than four feet deep in places.
A second spade from the cache found near Wickliffe Mounds, in Ballard County, Kentucky. It too shows no use polish, is made from Mill Creek chert and measures 11 7/8 inches in length.
References
Central States Archaeological Journal, 2004, Volume 51.4, pages 142-144.
Central States Archaeological Journal, 2001, Volume 58.4, page 218.
Lithic Casting Lab.
Megalithics / Flintknapper.
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