Dig It - 9/26/22
Hello Fellow Seekers, welcome to another informative, adventure packed blog from the Lonesome Prospector. Is there no end to the length and breadth of his knowledge? Today we are going to look at Fibrolite Axe Heads, like this one. These axe heads date to the Late Prehistoric period or Pueblo Four Period, roughly 1350 A.D. to 1600 A.D. In Ancestral Pueblo cultural history, this was a time of very large villages mostly clustered around the Rio Grande and its tributaries. It appears to have been a time of increased warfare as Puebloans competed for resources such as better access to arable land and more permanent sources of water. It was also the time when these axe heads made from Fibrolite begin to appear.
Fibrolite is a fibrous, metamorphic, silicate mineral formed deep within the earth’s crust under tremendous pressures. It is also called Sillimanite after the 19th century Yale professor of mineralogy Benjamin Sillman. When polished Fibrolite’s surface takes a very high shine. It comes in many colors, white, reds, browns, black, silver, green and yellow.
The Fibrolite axes made by the Pueblos were not utilitarian for chopping trees etc. They were weapons of war and offerings to the gods. This example is very large at 6” long. It was probably a high-status weapon. There are examples as small as 1.5”, which is certainly too small to have been an effective weapon of war, but perfect for a magical weapon or offering. At the ruins of San Lazaro in the Galisteo Basin of New Mexico, a great number of mostly broken Fibrolite axes were found in an abandoned ceremonial chamber or Kiva. One can surmise they must have been some type of offering. According to Lonesome, and this has been confirmed by others, the source for Fibrolite in New Mexico is somewhere in the Truchas Peaks area. Fibrolite axes were traded all over the Pueblo world because of their beautiful colors and high polish. They are still coveted by collectors today. Seek Out!