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Named stone

Cheshire quartzite

Also called Cheshire Formation quartzite

A kind of quartzite

Cheshire quartziteQuartziteNortheast

Description

Cheshire quartzite is the blue-gray to white quartzite of Vermont's Green Mountains, and the Journal of Vermont Archaeology calls it perhaps the most common stone on pre-contact sites in the state. Most of the Cheshire Formation is phyllite, useless for flaking, but a glassy quartzite at its base was quarried, and Native quarries are known throughout the Green Mountains, where the formation runs north-south down the western side of Vermont. Experiments show heat leaves its hue unchanged but makes it lighter and more translucent, until it looks like quartz. Paleoindian toolmakers in Maine carried it as one of the regional stones in fluted-point assemblages, though in small amounts. Archaeologists in the Champlain Valley describe a coarse, grayish-green quartzite resembling Cheshire as well.

How to identify it

Colour
Blue-gray to white (Boulanger and Hathaway 2006); a coarse grayish-green quartzite is also compared to Cheshire (Burke 1997).
Texture
Vitreous quartzite at the base of the formation; some pieces coarse-grained.
Luster
Vitreous.
Heat treatment
Heating did not change hue or chroma but raised Munsell value (lighter) and increased translucency; heated pieces can look like quartz (Boulanger and Hathaway 2006).

Geology

Basal vitreous quartzite of the Cheshire Formation, which is mostly phyllite; the formation forms a north-south band on the western side of Vermont and much of the Green Mountains.

Where it comes from

Northeast

States

Quarries and outcrops

  • Cheshire Formation outcrops and Native quartzite quarries throughout the Green Mountains, Vermont

Used by

  • Paleoindian: present at low frequency in Maine fluted-point site assemblages as a New England-Maritimes regional stone (NPS Multiple Property form)
  • Pre-contact Vermont generally: perhaps the most common lithic material on sites (Boulanger and Hathaway 2006)

Look-alikes

Stones that are easy to confuse with Cheshire quartzite.

  • Vein quartz (heated Cheshire quartzite can look like quartz)
  • Other coarse grayish-green quartzites in the Champlain Valley

Sources

  1. Boulanger, Matthew T., and Allen D. Hathaway. 2006. The Effects of Heat on Some Common Vermont Lithic Materials. Journal of Vermont Archaeology 7:54-.vtarchaeology.org (opens in a new tab)
  2. Burke, Adrian L. 1997. Lithic Sourcing and Prehistoric Cultural Geography in the Champlain Valley. Journal of Vermont Archaeology 2:43-52.vtarchaeology.org (opens in a new tab)
  3. National Park Service. Maine Fluted Point Paleoindian Sites, National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation Form.npgallery.nps.gov (opens in a new tab)

All materials