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Catlinite (Minnesota pipestone), photo 1
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Named stone

Catlinite (Minnesota pipestone)

Also called Pipestone, Red pipestone, Minnesota pipestone

A kind of argillite, hornfels, slate and siltstone

Catlinite (Minnesota pipestone)Argillite, hornfels, slate and siltstonePlains

2 photos

Description

Catlinite is the soft red claystone quarried at Pipestone National Monument in southwestern Minnesota, named after the painter George Catlin and first analysed by Charles T. Jackson in 1839. It is a pipe and ornament stone, not a flaking stone. It lies in thin beds between layers of hard Sioux quartzite; most of the carvable stone comes from a layer only about 5 cm thick. Because it contains no quartz it carves easily. Hematite usually makes it red, but it ranges from dark maroon to near white, and pale spots come from leaching. A study of 193 pipestone artifacts traced about 60 percent to southwestern Minnesota or nearby South Dakota, including pieces from the Southwest, Ohio Hopewell and Kansas. Other red pipestones look alike, so a source needs lab testing.

How to identify it

Colour
Usually red from hematite, ranging from dark maroon to near white; also brown, orange, yellowish orange, green-grey, blue-grey and cream. Pale spots, as in stone from the Spotted Quarry, come from partial leaching of the hematite (NPS overview).
Texture
Soft, compact claystone that carves easily because it lacks quartz (NPS overview). Not a flaking stone.

Geology

An argillite (claystone) made mainly of pyrophyllite and muscovite with some diaspore and kaolinite. It began as flood mud on river floodplains and survives as thin, patchy beds inside the Early Proterozoic Sioux Quartzite. Beds run from about an inch to 2 feet thick; at least six were exposed along the monument's quarry lines in 1979-1980, dipping east at 5 to 10 degrees (NPS overview). Similar red claystones exist in many states, and some specialists keep the name catlinite for the monument's stone only (NPS overview).

Where it comes from

Plains, Midwest/Ohio Valley

States

Quarries and outcrops

  • Pipestone National Monument, Pipestone County, Minnesota (83 numbered quarry spaces along the north, south and Sun Dance quarry lines)
  • Other pipestone sources in southwestern Minnesota and adjacent South Dakota (Sigstad 1972, via Bakken)

Used by

  • Sigstad (1972) argued the quarries were used as long as about 5,000 years ago (Bakken)
  • The NPS overview, citing Boszhardt and Gundersen (1996), puts the earliest confirmed catlinite artifacts about 3,000 years after the first Wisconsin and Illinois pipestone use of about 5,000 years ago
  • Use became widespread after about AD 1200; Oneota quarrying is placed about AD 1450 (Benchley et al. 1997 and Henning 2003, via the NPS overview)
  • Traded widely: Ancestral Pueblo and Hohokam sites, Adena and Hopewell, Fort Ancient, Great Bend sites in Kansas, and historic sites from Michigan to Idaho and Quebec (Sigstad 1972, via Bakken)
  • Pendants, beads, pipe preforms, T-shaped and platform pipes in South Dakota (Boen and Williams 2022)
  • Still quarried under permit; in 2002, 47 pits were allotted to individual quarriers (NPS overview). The stone has deep ritual importance to many Native nations (Bakken)

Look-alikes

Stones that are easy to confuse with Catlinite (Minnesota pipestone).

  • Other red pipestones: Kansas, South Dakota and Wisconsin pipestones (NPS overview)
  • "Flint clay" pipestones from Missouri, Illinois, Ohio and Kentucky (NPS overview)
  • Del Rio argillite and other Arizona red pipestones (NPS overview, Table 3)

Sources

  1. Scott, Douglas D., Thomas D. Thiessen, Jeffrey J. Richner, and Scott Stadler. 2006. An Archeological Inventory and Overview of Pipestone National Monument, Minnesota. Midwest Archeological Center Occasional Studies in Anthropology 34. National Park Service, Lincoln, Nebraska.govinfo.gov (opens in a new tab)
  2. 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)
  3. Boen, Renee M., and Roger R. Williams. 2022. Identifying Chipped and Ground Stone Artifacts Found in South Dakota and Adjacent Regions. Cultural Material Series No. 2. South Dakota State Historical Society, Archaeological Research Center.history.sd.gov (opens in a new tab)

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