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Named stone

Bijou Hills quartzite

Also called Bijou Hills silicified sediment, Bijou Hills sandstone

A kind of quartzite

Bijou Hills quartziteQuartzitePlains

Description

Bijou Hills quartzite, which Minnesota archaeologists call Bijou Hills silicified sediment, is a South Dakota stone from the Missouri River country. It looks a little like Hixton silicified sandstone: light grey to pale green or rich olive green, with a mix of clear and dark mineral grains that give it a salt-and-pepper look. It is moderately translucent and often develops a frosty white surface film. People carried it east, and it turns up as a non-local stone at sites in southwestern and southern Minnesota; an arrow-shaft abrader of Bijou Hills sandstone comes from Goodhue County, Minnesota. At the Stelzer site in South Dakota, the Sonota type site, one of 277 points was of this green quartzite.

How to identify it

Colour
Light grey to pale green to rich olive green (Bakken); described as a distinctive green quartzite (Graham).
Texture
Mixed clear and darker mineral grains give a salt-and-pepper look; moderately translucent (Bakken).
Cortex
Often takes on a frosty white surface patina (Bakken).

Where it comes from

Plains

States

Quarries and outcrops

  • Small outcrops along the Missouri River basin, South Dakota (Ahler 1977, via Graham)

Used by

  • Besant / Sonota, Stelzer site, South Dakota: one projectile point of 277 (Graham 2014)
  • Non-local stone at sites in Rock and Pipestone counties and elsewhere in southern Minnesota (Bakken)

Look-alikes

Stones that are easy to confuse with Bijou Hills quartzite.

  • Hixton silicified sandstone, Wisconsin (Bakken)
  • Ogallala quartzite, which also occurs as green quartzite in South Dakota (see the Ogallala quartzite page)

Sources

  1. Bakken, Kent E. (written about 1995; PDF issued later). Chipped Stone Raw Materials. Chapter 6 in Stone Tools of Minnesota. Minnesota Office of the State Archaeologist, St. Paul.mn.gov (opens in a new tab)
  2. Graham, Reid Jordan. 2014. Breathing New Life into Old Records: Analysis of the Muhlbach and Stelzer Sites on the Northern Plains. M.A. thesis, University of Alberta.ualberta.scholaris.ca (opens in a new tab)

All materials