[meteorite-list] Havana

From: bernd.pauli at paulinet.de <bernd.pauli_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: 18 Jan 2009 16:41:59 UT
Message-ID: <DIIE.000000200000383B_at_paulinet.de>

Hello Michael G. and List,

Maybe this excerpt from Buchwald is helpful, too:

BUCHWALD V.F. (1975) Handbook of Iron Meteorites, Volume 2, pp. 635-637:

Havana, Illinois, U.S.A.
40?20'N, 90?3'W
Fine octahedrite, Of. Bandwidth about 0.35 mm. Annealed kamacite.
Group IIIC.
11.4% Ni,
above 0.2% P,
20.5 ppm Ga,
21.6 ppm Ge,
0.3 ppm Ir.
Artificially annealed and cold-worked.

History

"In the summer of *1945*, members of the Illinois State Museum under the direction
of Thorne Deuel, Director of the Museum, excavated a group of Indian burial mounds
in the Havana, Mason County area. Burial No. 10 in Mound No.9 of this group yielded
22 rounded bead-like objects, composed of strongly oxidized iron, together with slightly
more than 1000 ground shell and pearl or pearl slug beads. As the burial was evidently
prehistoric and of Hopewellian age, it was at once conjectured that the iron might be
of meteoric origin" (Grogan 1948).

Two complete rounded specimens and two fragments were thoroughly examined by Grogan
who presented an exhaustive description and concluded that the beads were actually worked
meteoritic material. Arnold & Libby (1951), who examined wood from the same Mound
No. 9, found a C-14 age of 2,336?250 years, which confirmed the Hopewellian age.

The Illinois burials are thus of approximately the same age as the burials discussed under
Hopewell Mounds, situated 600 km farther east in Ohio, see page 656. Wasson & Schaudy
(1971) analyzed the material and found it similar to Mungindi, belonging to group IIIC.

Collections: Washington (12 g); Illinois State Museum.

Description

The small iron-bearing masses had cylindrical to flattened globular shapes and maximum
transverse diam?eters of approximately 3/16 to 5/8 of an inch. Dr. Deuel and his associates
first advanced the hypothesis that they were beads after observing that in the burial the
metallic objects alternated with one or two disc-shaped, cut and ground shell beads and
that their sizes varied in a manner indicating that all had been graded to size on a string.


Best from rainy
Germany,

Bernd
Received on Sun 18 Jan 2009 11:41:59 AM PST