Chipped Stone Spade

A chipped stone spade is a large, flat, oval to elliptical biface, much longer than wide, with both ends pointed or rounded, or with one end narrowed and the other broad and curved (Fowke 1896). Rau (1869) noted one face flat and the other slightly convex. Large examples exceed 300 mm, and the long forms are never notched (Moorehead 1910).

Spades were shaped by percussion from large, flat, lens-shaped chert nodules, above all Mill Creek chert from Union and Alexander counties, Illinois, where workshop debris shows every stage from nodule to finished blade (Fowke 1896; Holmes 1919). Some received fine secondary flaking (Moorehead 1910). They were hafted in line with the long axis or at an angle to it (Hodge 1907).

Long use left a glassy polish and fine striations on the digging end only (Rau 1869); Moorehead (1910) argued that the polish comes from use, not soil, since quarry blanks of the same stone lack it. Unused spades were cached: lots of 57 and 75 near Caseyville, Kentucky (Fowke 1896), and about 20 with some 50 hoes at East St. Louis (Rau 1869). At Cahokia several lay in mounds, one at the base of a clay altar (Moorehead 1928). The key trait is a long, unnotched oval blade with use polish at one end.

Length 152–330 mm in two cached lots from Caseyville, Kentucky (n = 132, Fowke 1896, converted from inches). Rau's figured spade over 305 mm long, about 130 mm wide and 19 mm thick (Rau 1869, converted from inches); a Wisconsin example 349 mm long (Moorehead 1910, converted from inches). Large Mill Creek hoe and spade blades range 76–457 mm long and 51–178 mm wide (Holmes 1919, converted from inches). Small Oklahoma spades or hoes are 80–140 mm long (Bell 1980). Morrow (2016) gives the large unnotched form, elliptical or flaring and bell-shaped, as up to 300 mm long and more.

Rich bottomlands of the central Mississippi Valley, especially around Cahokia and between Springfield, Illinois, and the Mississippi; also Missouri, Arkansas, western Kentucky and Tennessee (Fowke 1896; Moorehead 1910). Rare in the far South and on the Plains; traded north into Wisconsin as far as Green Lake and Sheboygan counties, and scarce north of Peoria, Illinois (Moorehead 1910, 1928).

Identification tips: Look for a symmetrical oval or elliptical outline, no notches, and gloss limited to one end. Cached pieces may show no polish at all (Rau 1869).

Similar types: Chipped Stone Hoe is shorter and often notched, stemmed or flared at the bit (Hodge 1907; Illinois State Museum). Celt is narrower and thick-bodied (Holmes 1919). Cached chert disks called turtlebacks are round to almond-shaped and only 89–191 mm long (Fowke 1896).

Naming: Rau (1869) called these shovels; Fowke (1896) and Moorehead (1910) used spades. The BAE Handbook (Hodge 1907) noted that the long blades were usually called spades and the short or notched ones hoes, but judged the split of little significance; Moorehead called hoes small spades. The Illinois State Museum now lists the form as the oval hoe, one of three Mississippian hoe types, and Morrow (2016) contrasts the larger, often-called spades with smaller notched St. Clair-style hoes. None of the sources opened uses the collectors' names Mill Creek Spade or Dover Spade.

Dating evidence: Spades lay in Cahokia mound fill, including the Ramey Mound (Moorehead 1928).