Sorry so late, been deep in the field:) Chickens require "grit" in their 
crop/gizzard in order to sorta pre-digest their food. Sounds awfully large 
for a gizzard stone to me but then again, I'm no chicken farmer, simply an 
archaeologist.  I have seen ceramic sherds from a Mid-Tn site that underwent 
"adaptive reuse" (a term borrowed from you architectural historians out 
there:) by chickens as stones on historic sites but all I've seen were much 
smaller than .5 inch and usually less than .25.  Sorry, no readily available 
jpegs.  Perhaps chickens are much bigger where your site is?

Dan Allen
Cumberland Research Group, Inc.
and GRA; the Center for Historic Preservation @
Middle Tennessee State University.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mark Branstner" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2006 4:10 PM
Subject: Gaming disks vs. chicken stones


> 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 C. Branstner
>
> Illinois Transportation
> Archaeological Research Program
> 209 Nuclear Physics Lab, MC-571
> 23 East Stadium Drive
> Champaign, IL 61820
>
> Phone: 217.244.0892
> Fax: 217.244.7458
> Cell: 517.927.4556
> [log in to unmask]
>
> "There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth,
> without either virtue or talents ... The artificial aristocracy is a
> mischievous ingredient in government, and provisions should be made to
> prevent its ascendancy."
>
> - Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
>