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Named stone

Munsungun Lake chert

Also called Munsungun red chert, Norway Bluff black chert, Munsungun Lake Formation chert

A kind of chert (and flint)

Munsungun Lake chertChert (and flint)Northeast

Description

Munsungun Lake chert comes from the Ordovician Munsungun Lake Formation in north-central Maine. The formation holds thin beds of fine-grained chert among thick volcanic layers, in red, green, gray and black, sometimes mottled or banded. Red chert is the famous variety: it shows up in fluted-point sites across New England and into Quebec, and its steady long-distance travel suggests it carried special meaning. Most exposures are cracked and jointed, so good red stone is scarce, and only one small red-chert quarry has been documented. Black and gray varieties outcrop over larger areas near Norway Bluff and Round Mountain. Hunters also left quarries and workshops around the lakes of the region.

How to identify it

Colour
Red, green, gray and black, or combinations, with mottling and banding (Bonnichsen); tools at the Fluted Point and Windy City sites were mostly black, black-and-gray banded, and red-and-green mottled chert.
Texture
Fine grained (Bonnichsen); the red beds are thin and heavily jointed (Kitchel).

Geology

Bedded chert in the Ordovician Munsungun Lake Formation, a northeast-to-southwest belt of volcanic and volcaniclastic rock with chert, wacke and slate (the USGS lists chert as an incidental rock type). Red chert occurs as thin beds of fine-grained material between massive volcaniclastic layers, and nearly all known exposures are highly jointed. Extensive black and gray chert deposits are mapped near Norway Bluff, and similar material plus dull red mudstone lies near Round Mountain.

Where it comes from

Northeast

States

Quarries and outcrops

  • Norway Bluff (black and gray chert, mapped deposits)
  • Round Mountain Pond and Mooseleuk Lake (quarry and workshop clusters)
  • Munsungun and Chase lakes, including the Thoroughfare between them (Fluted Point and Windy City sites)
  • One documented small red-chert quarry (Kitchel, Rockwell and Barker 2020)

Used by

  • Paleoindian fluted-point period: red Munsungun chert in sites throughout New England and at Cliche-Rancourt-Mamsalhabika, Quebec (Kitchel)
  • Late Paleoindian: red chert largely vanishes, while black Munsungun chert is used at the Varney Farm site, Maine (Kitchel)
  • Quarry and workshop sites of the Ceramic to Paleoindian periods around the lakes (Bonnichsen)

Look-alikes

Stones that are easy to confuse with Munsungun Lake chert.

  • Black and gray chert and dull red mudstone from the Round Mountain area, visually similar to Norway Bluff material (Kitchel)
  • Normanskill and Hardyston (Pennsylvania) cherts, which occur in the same Northeast assemblages

Sources

  1. Kitchel, Nathaniel R. 2024. Facing the Forest: Climate Change and Human Adaptation Across the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition in Northern New England and Eastern Canada. PaleoAmerica (online 28 Oct 2024). doi:10.1080/20555563.2024.2414630.par.nsf.gov (opens in a new tab)
  2. Bonnichsen, Robson. 1984. Paleoindian Sites in the Munsungun Lake Region, Northern Maine. Current Research in the Pleistocene 1:3-4.liberalarts.tamu.edu (opens in a new tab)
  3. U.S. Geological Survey. State Geologic Map Compilation: Ordovician Munsungun Lake Formation (MEOml;0), Maine.mrdata.usgs.gov (opens in a new tab)

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