Black soot like coating layered amongst sediment

upload it to a hosting site, ie photobucket.
use [img] tags.
make sure the picture is visible by previewing before you post it...

Phil, this somewhat OT but I commiserate with Marty inasmuch as it ought to be easier to post a photo, simply copy-paste, eg as in an email to an acquaintance

Marty, hang in there, you might hear from another rockhound or two like Farmer. Meantime you say it will rub off so is it a black rock and if so well consolidated or powdery, is it smooth or sandy or is any of it glassy, does it contain smaller rocks, how does it smell, etc. But if it's soot-like does it leave a streak on the hand, so could it be charcoal

Charcoal was my first thought; the rocks are of various types, not black. Quartz, Chert, granite and others in sediment layers. It will leave a streak on your hand. It would have to be from ancient fires as it is pretty deep in the sediment. I will try the pics.

Always helps, Marty

Let us know how difficult it proves

Charcoal can form during "Diagenesis" wherein some layers of organic material , like wood from a beach pile f flotsam and driftwood, or flood deposits , or snags in a riverbed, are compressed by the overlying sediments and they slowly "stew' in anoxic conditions. However, there are also another bunch of reasons that this can appear and these are managese dioxide deposits called "wad' and ultra fine black sediments of melanocratic (dark colored) minerals like diopside, titanium, spinel, magnetite and uraninite.
usually the latter are slightly more coarser grained.

I need to see the context to provide an opinion as to whether its any one of the above (or something else entirely)

P Dale, Im a rocknocker, not a rockhound. My title takes 3 degrees and years of work in the mines. A rockhound isa hobbyist who usually quits thinking about his rock hunting trip after he has his
first beer. A rocknocker thinks about how he can invoice somebody on it

There is a river here that has a smoking riverbank. It called smoky river... There are seams of coal running throughout the cliff sides and the seams were ignited by lightening or forrest fires long, long ago.
Just a stab in the dark. I defer to anything farmerman says on the subject.

could be that too. Pics say a thosand words

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&sugexp=les%3B&gs_rn=1&gs_ri=hp&gs_mss=definerocknocker&pq=rocknocker&cp=7&gs_id=41&xhr=t&q=define+rocknocker&es_nrs=true&pf=p&tbo=d&sclient=psy-ab&oq=define+rocknocker&gs_l=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&bvm=bv.41524429,d.cGE&fp=171f1ce03d5b6aef&biw=1411&bih=753

http://onelook.com/?w=nock&ls=a

If not critically revealing, schooled where (as you obviously speak the most fluent English), where and what was mined, and what exactly did you do down there….

….did you bring any rocks back home and how did you then display them

Carrying a small fridge as semipermanent installation I must have ben the exception as I'd still be at it after the first sixpack. Looking back, what's so appalling, is then I'd drive back home

So rocknocker is a professional geologist who scratches a bill into the surface of a rock

Myschools were all US colleges and unis with the exception of some small stints at Dalhousie an another Canadaian school where we took a series of long term seminars on limestone deposition.

Much of my mining has been with a few substances like Titanium or rare earths. However, many of my largets contracts ere in finding an assessing reserves of Ca rich kimestones for cement.

Ive done oil and gas, and spend about half my time in assessing environmental damages and water degredation from many types of extraction and mining. Thats one of the reasons I maintain a low profile. Im usually working on a case or two an lawyers love to look at peoples "face book" accounts and

Thank you Man for that report

I presume that a2k must constitute a much lower profile than Facebook

Please describe the 'folded sediment' in more detail:
Firm, pliable, brittle, cemented, fines, clay, color?
Holocene, Ice Age, older?
Probable mechanism that folded it?
Near a large elongate depression trending N/S?
[email protected]

this thread has seen its fifth birthday with no help from its author (and no pictures either). So whether its a problem in geology or archeology or forestry is still unknown.

Sorry, Id like to see it too.