George,
I think folks just call them nutting stones for lack of anything better to call them. I've read several different ideas as to what they might have really been used for.
Rocks are where you find them, that one in the goose field was just pure luck. I found a nice scraper once out squirrel hunting. I'd missed my mark a bit and come out of the woods on a dirt road futher down than I'd intended. The road had been freshly grated just a few days before, I turned down it to walk to my car and saw the scraper in the burm the grader had turned up on the roadside.
And of course the point I mentioned before that my father had brought in on the mud of his work boots. That was luck for sure, it could have fallen out anywhere between there and the jobsite.
Best rock I ever saw picked up right around my home town was a 10 inch discoidal. An old trapper I know showed it to me when I ran into him coming off his line east of town one morning. He was an indian rock hunter as well and was always scanning the creek banks for them.
The locals around here must have just been hunting and fishing folks, to get the real high quality stones in Southern Illinois you've got to get closer to the rivers. Our rocks right around here are just real run of the mill stuff for the most part.
Saw a small obsidian point once that the guy swore up and down he'd found about 50 miles from here. He wasn't one to lie so I guess he really did. That little arrowhead must have traveled a long way as there isn't anything like that kind of rock around here. Same fellow had a copper arm ring that had come out of a pit burial he'd found washed out near the Mississippi. He'd showed it to a fella at the University and was told it was definitely pre-Columbian. Closest copper to this area is the UP of Michigan as far as I know, so it had come a long way as well. Those old boys swapped and traded stuff just like we do today, particularly along the big rivers where it was so much easier to travel.
Destry
