Arkansas novaculite

Novaculite is a hard, fine-grained silica rock, like chert or flint, made of very small quartz crystals. Its name comes from the Latin word for razor, and the same Arkansas stone has been quarried for whetstones since the early 1800s. It is often white or light gray, but pink, red, tan, dark gray and black occur, and thin edges are translucent. People in and near the Ouachita Mountains used it for points, knives, drills and scrapers from about 10,500 B.C. to A.D. 1700. Over 120 novaculite quarries are recorded in Arkansas, some of the largest archaeological sites in the state. Artifacts are known from Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Alabama. Heat treatment made it easier to flake.

The Arkansas Novaculite Formation: beds of massive novaculite mixed with chert and shale, laid down from silica that separated from seawater in the Devonian to Mississippian (about 318 to 416 million years ago), then folded and tilted by mountain building. It outcrops along the Benton-Broken Bow Uplift between Little Rock, Arkansas, and Broken Bow, Oklahoma. The Survey says novaculite is found only in the Ouachitas of Arkansas and Oklahoma and in southwest Texas.