My oldest artifact!

I would be skeptical of this, since from the picture, there is no evidence of knapping. It seems completely smooth, like a river rock.

 

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my teapot

Large Bronze Age Brush-Decorated 'Teapot' 16th-14th century BC

A squat terracotta vessel with broad base, rounded body, low rim with collar, short spout, the shoulder with band of brushed texturing. 1.5 kg, 20cm (8"). Mid-Eastern

 

Bronze dagger blade
Canaanite
early to mid 2nd Millennium BC
17cm (6.7”)
Ex- Shlomo Zeitsov Collection

 

Since, quite correctly, a fossil is not an artifact,this is it.

Glaux (Owl) Skyphos (Small drinking cup) Redware ( Red pottery black over-painted) Apulian ( Southern Italian Grecian colony) Funereal ceremonial drinking vessel c 3rd century BC.
ex HJB Many fakes out there.

Type A.

 

I think we've found the post to beat...

 

Yes, I get what you’re saying about moon rocks being cool and old, although planet earth itself is just as old as your moon rock.

I was just surprised to see rocks and fossils called artifacts.

 

Obviously "artifact" has been expanded here to include rocks, minerals, fossils, meteorites, etc., anything that is very, very, old.

I think this expanded format has given CT members a chance to post some pretty cool items, human-made and others.

 

Here's an interesting item that arrived today, which I think qualifies as a bonified artifact.

This a a piece of hack silver, from the Levant region, weighing two shekels at 25.90 grams. It dates from the late Bronze Age to the early Iron Age, which puts it around the 13th-10th centuries BCE.





The upper left area of the first image appears to be a crude stamp, a clear indentation in the surface, comprised of a Paleo-Hebrew beth or bet symbol:



And two sickle-like characters, one to the right and the other just below the bet symbol.

There might be more characters, but due to the weathered and rough surface, they are hard to make out.

 

I see... a battered lump. Could you highlight the characters that you think you see?

 

Here's the highlighted character, or what may be a character, along with two others.

What do you think?

Thanks

 

I think that's a stretchy bit of pareidolia.

 

You could be right.

Maybe my senile old brain is up to its usual tricks....

 

WOW, very nice, @robinjojo ...

I captured this Hacksilber also...


Israelite
AR 2 Gerah Hacksilber
ca 8th-6th C. BCE
8.8x10mm 1.12g
ex David Hendin

 

I think the random texture on that surface contains enough detail to let someone see all kinds of patterns, images, or symbols.

I haven't spent much time at all studying ancient artifacts, but it seems surprising that something that old would have a symbol struck in relief rather than incuse. The feature you point out is clearly in relief. It looks like it has about the same amount of relief as other features on the surface.

Full disclosure: I'm probably biased because of all the posts I've seen to the Error Coins forum, where people pick up a pavement-damaged modern coin and convince themselves that they see out-of-place letters, hints of an overstruck coin's design, or the ever-popular "doubling". I don't know whether the skepticism I've nurtured there is appropriate here. But based on what I know about visual perception (which I have studied a bit), I suspect the symbols are more in our minds than on the object's surface.

 

Thanks

The surfaces do look blended. I'm still studying this hacksiber and probably will for some time. Perhaps I can find a specialist in this area.

Perhaps this "character" was part of the mold, since these pieces were generally cast, at least in the case of this ingot. In hand it really stands out.

For what it is worth, I also see a small figure on the same side, but I don't want to get into that, I don't want to be involuntarily committed.

 

The lable on the hand axe says that it was found in western Algiers, i.e. in Africa.

 

A few years ago I was in Luxor, Egypt and I stayed in the famous Winter Palace Hotel. Behind the reception I noticed a board with several paleolithic hand axes fixed to it. The receptionist told me that a colleague had found them decades ago in the dessert near the valley of the kings. I went for a hike there an lo and behold I found several Acheulean hand axes and very very many neolithic blades and points. The area had apparently been fertile many millennia ago and deposits from the paleolithic to the neolithic accumulated in the soil. When the fertile soil dissappeared the stone artefacts remained in place and in some places they litter the ground. Needless, to say that I left them where they were, not least because it is strictly forbidden to take any artefacts out of Egypt.
Nevertheless, the feeling of picking up an object that someone had dropped thousands and even hundredthousands of years is quite an experience.

 

Outside the Temple of Seti, Abydos, I was rooting around the outside amongst the heaps of ancient sherds called the Mother of pots I unearthed a small unpainted panel with star decorations.
I placed it against the temple wall. It wasn't there the next time I went!

 

The following artifact is likely to be used for perfume. It's 10 cm high, with base diameter of 3.2 cm. Diameter of mouth up : 1.5 cm.
I noticed that there was a black stamp on top of this vase, looking like the head of a cat. I'm sure that the stamp is ancient. This artifact might be Phoenician or other.. I don't know how old it could be.

 

Stone axe and dagger, Funnelbeaker culture, c. 4300–2800 BC.

Both artifacts as well as numerous others were found by my grandfather during construction work on our family's property in northern Germany in the early 1950s. He informed the local authorities, but back then nobody cared. The neolithic tools found by him now are family heirlooms.