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Date: | Wed, 26 Apr 2006 18:58:42 -0700 |
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on 4/26/06 2:10 PM, Mark Branstner at [log in to unmask] wrote:
> Ok, we're past April Fool's Day, so you can assume that this is a
> serious question ...
>
> In the past 30 years, I have seen a number of small disks that have
> been created from decorated historic ceramics, either chipped and/or
> ground round, with color pattern on one side and white or undecorated
> on the other. My graduate school mentors described these as "gaming
> disks", created for games where an odds or evens scoring system was
> assumed. Usually these are about 0.5 inch or slightly more in
> diameter. I have seen them in both historic period Native American
> and Euroamerican sites. As such, I have always assumed the
> categorization logical and valid.
>
> I recently found one of these in what appeared to be a mid-nineteenth
> century agricultural assemblage (actually, a blue flow specimen on a
> very hard white paste). Mentioned the gaming piece conclusion tomy
> client, and he scoffed, dismissing it as a gizzard stone from
> chickens. Which reminded me that I have heard similar attributions
> in the past.
>
> Anyone care to hazard an opinion about gizzard stones ... Do they
> really exist? How big a stone would a chicken ingest? Or anything
> else germaine to gaming stones and such. I will be glad to e-mail a
> photo of my example to anyone interested.
>
> Thanks.
Mark - Gizzard stones exist.... I am most familiar with those from
turkeys, but birds can't digest without them. As far as I can tell they
gradually reduce to a paste in the gizzard of a living bird. When they are
found in the state you describe they have usually been cut out of the
gizzard in the butchering process. They tend to be (on average) about the
size of your small fingernail and have a worn look at the edges and perhaps
a duller glaze. On Ancestral Pueblo sites in the Southwest, where I am most
familiar with them, they are a hot topic in terms of questions about the
possible prehistoric domestication of the turkey in that region. But one
certainly does recover "worn" prehistoric pottery sherds out there that were
without much doubt once gizzard stones. I know they are also found on
historic sites, and I suspect folks that work in the Caribbean will have
some comment. On sites attributable to African Americans they are sometimes
interpreted as gaming stones. I'm sure others can comment on that debate.
I suspect the final determination of gizzard stone versus gaming piece is a
matter of context.
Joe Dent
American University
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