[meteorite-list] Havana Illinois and Florida finds - Indian connection

From: Michael Gilmer <michael_w_gilmer_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 11:36:54 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <628894.15339.qm_at_web58402.mail.re3.yahoo.com>

Hi Bernd!

Thanks for sharing the interesting back-story on Havana. Ever since
reading Burke's Cosmic Debris, I have been fascinated by those
meteorites that have connections with indigenous peoples.

It makes me think of that old movie "The Gods Must Be Crazy", about
a bushman who "finds" a coke bottle dropped from an airplane and
considers it an object of reverence and worship. Actually he was
struck on the head with it - the ultimate soda bottle hammer! But,
in my mind I see a meteorite and not the coke bottle, and I wonder
what ancient cultures must have thought of these heavenly gifts.

These cultures were generally agrarian, animist, and held a deep innate
respect for nature and it's wonders. How magical and supernatural a
meteorite must have been in their eyes. I never tire of reading those
stories. :)

Regards and clear skies,

MikeG





.........................................................
Michael Gilmer (Louisiana, USA)
Member of the Meteoritical Society.
Member of the Bayou Region Stargazers Network.
Websites - http://www.galactic-stone.com and http://www.glassthrower.com
..........................................................


Message: 4
Date: 18 Jan 2009 16:41:59 UT
From: bernd.pauli at paulinet.de
Subject: [meteorite-list] Havana
To: Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
Message-ID: <DIIE.000000200000383B at paulinet.de>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

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 02:36:54 PM PST