Anne:
        Having spent most of my life on the margin of the Onondaga Escarpment in
central New York State, I can say that I have seen some massive chunks of
"flint" or chert, as we call it, in the Onondaga Limestone (Devonian), but
I have never seen it used as an intentional architectural component.  It
occurrs in narrow beds of nodules that formed within the limestone and thus
only by accident was it included in building stone.  Some beds of chert are
quite thick (20 - 30 cm) but, being composed of various sized nodules, are
so irregular that you would be hard pressed tro find a big enough peice to
comprise an entire decent sized building block.  Many of central New York's
most fascinating 19th century buildings, all of the locks on the old Erie
Canal, as well as other massive engineering works such as dams, bridges,
and fortifications, are made of this stone but the chert is notably absent
from the building blocks as it was considered an imperfection and would
have weakened the massive stones and caused them to cleave (a problem in
the deep frosty CNY winters !)  Most stones are perfectly clear of
imperfections and can be quite large = often a meter thick and I've seen
some 10 meters long!
        I have seen glacially rounded cobbles of chert used in the construction of
many of the region's unique 19th century cobblestone houses, but they were
probably chosen for their dark color rather than their "flinty" qualities.
Polished Onondaga Limestone tabletops and tombstones (obelisks) made in the
1840s to 1880s took advantage of the wonderful fossils that were within the
stone and I have never seen a spot of chert.  I suppose this is because the
chert is so much harder than the surrounding matrix and usually caused a
cleavage plane which the carvers used to their advantage.
        While working at Mount Independence (160 acres of Rev. War fortification
on Lake Champlian) with David Starbuck a few years ago I saw many wonderful
chert outcrops but only minor inclusions in the widespread foundations and
debris piles.  Debitage piles were found at all the outcrops but fragments
were small and the larger pieces quarried in prehistoric times would have
been picked over by soldiers looking for good flints for their guns.
 
        Dan W.
 
 
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      DAN WEISKOTTEN'S HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY WEB PAGE at:
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      Since I'm desperate for work in the Richmond/Penninsula area, take a
look
             at my CVand samples of my informal research and writing at:
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