Getting into the Groove: Replicating the Southern California Cogged Stone

Summary

Cogged Stones are an ambiguous artifact often associated with Bolsa Chica in Orange County, California. Scientific Resource Surveys, Inc., has been involved in the study of the Bolsa Chica mesa for over 30 years resulting in the longest privately funded cultural resource investigations in Southern California. This poster highlights one facet of SRSinc’s, current studies on the cogged stones. It has been purposed that the manufacture of cogged stones took place on the Bolsa Chica mesa at the site known as CA-ORA-83. Cogged Stones from the Bolsa Chica collection range from gritty porous material such as vesicular basalts, to denser tough material, like andesite, indicating the manufacture of the artifact type would have likely followed a similar trajectory seen in the production of utilitarian groundstone implements. As highlighted in another poster by SRSinc, tools associated with groundstone production were prevalent within the lithic assemblage of the site. Drawing on past replicative experiments, SRSinc, developed a hypothetical manufacturing sequence for the cogged stones. Utilizing the proposed sequence, SRSinc conducted a number of replicative experiments to test how well beveled shaped hammerstones worked in the manufacture of cogged stones on different lithic materials.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage