Denisovan Ancestry in East Eurasian and Native American Populations

09 October 2016

A solid central Virginia Paleolithic art and tool site has been identified by another amature archaeologist who is told he has found "river rocks"

'Bird figure stone'
Adrian Ellis finds, central Virginia
'Bird in hand with eye and beak detail'

Hook-billed bird head (like an eagle) with stone removal to make the beak identified by Adrian. Bird heads and bird figures are commonly found at these kinds of archaeology sites.

Bird forms and quasi bird forms from the site

Three animal head sculptures identified by Adrian Ellis who has an MFA degree in sculpture from UCLA and has studied stone sculpture. The top two look like felines and the bottom one is more vague but likely feline too. They all have worked 'eyes.'

Illustration of the worked eye areas on the three animal head sculptures

A Levallois-like point from this central Virginia site

A geometric point

Worked and then worn through use rhomboid shapes identified by Adrian

Oldowan rhomboids, Netherlands, 700,000 to 200,000 BP, from originsnet.org for comparison to Virginia examples above found by Adrian Ellis.

A simple Oldowan Mode I Lithics cobble tool from Virginia with two breaks to create a sharp edge. These simple cultural materials with such light modification are too often overlooked in American Archaeology.

A worked stone survey from the site. There is a noticeable lack of flint among the artifacts at the site. This may indicate a preference for non-flint materials because flint is often tied to the landscape in very specific places. It may indicate a people not very familiar with the flint tool stone resources in the area who have to make do with what they have at hand. It may indicate a people with Asian tool making traditions which favored coarse stone materials because flint and chert materials are relatively scarce there.
"I also want to share with you how poorly I've been treated by the archaeological community... Still cannot believe that I have been told these are only river rocks, if you have half a brain, you can see they are tools." -Adrian Ellis, Virginia
Central Virginia location of these featured artifacts found and identified by Adrian.

The field of Archaeology continues to squander opportunities to identify new patterns of lithics behavior on the landscape by its inability or unwillingness to take some very astute and observant non-professionals like Adrian Ellis seriously.

1 comment:

  1. I think if you are familiar with sculpture, and you have worked in many types of stone, sediments, and aggregates, it is highly probable that you understand fracturing patterns. Furthermore it is also likely that you can see the difference between natural fracture matrices in regular crystalline structures, versus random fracturing. I find it interesting that Mr. Ellis continues to find the same tool, art objects in many materials that are not random and consistent within the context of one site. Hats off to you Mr. Ellis, continue to do what you are doing, people are paying attention.

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