Help identifying a stone?

Red fragments could contain iron rust. Test it with a magnet and take more closed up pictures of some fragment along with a ruler for reference. I wonder what kind of plant is that which is attached to the rock.

Kara how easy to scratch, does the red wash off, and do you see anything at all between each fragment

This looks like the remnants of an iron "Bloomery". This was an old way of making iron from low grade iron oxides and oxyhydroxide minerals,(often called "Bog ore").

It was a way that earliest iron making was done in the bronze age (Many cultures did use iron during what we call the Bronze age because it was an accidental find in the Carpathians and in the Levant.

The rocks were just piled within a lined pit and a fire was kept going. The ores, (Mostly iron and Magnesium Calcium silicate rocks), would separate into a spongy mass called "iron bloom", the components were iron rich and iron poor denser silicates called forsterite and fayalite.

Stuff was fashioned out of bloom iron but most of it was brittle until the next step "smelting" was discovered much later. Chinese iron ware is very old but, because its mostly bloom iron, is almost all busted up artifact material.Metallurgy and its archeology is, in many folks opinion, mostly developed on bullshit premises, as if iron "followed some progression" of metallurgy)

WHat prt of the world do you live in? Bloomeries in the US were early colonial, used mostly to slightly "enrich" iron from the bog ore . The spongy material was then refined by making pig iron. In Europe and the LEvant, however, you may have an early archeological indicator of a settlement.


Many times these old Bloomwries were kept in use and then just abandoned and covered up with dirt.
When these wre found (mostly by using magnetometers or even the cheapy metal detectors), they were excavated just like the thing you have on your photo. Its either that or a metamorphic contact zone where hydrocarbon rock (like oil shales) could have caught fire and burnt right up to the contact with a non-hydrocarbon rich rock.


A third possibility is this is some piece of artifct froma coal bed fire where the coaly rock (called "boney") has burnt all the contained pyrite and converted it to something like limonite or Goethite and thi too, is nxt to non coal contct.

Actually it could be a lot of things but I thing the iron bloom is my best guess without handling it.

Man, I'm really impressed. Forgive if it's a repeat q, but what sort of ed. has provided your vast background in this venue, and what attracted you to a2k

I wouldn't be surprised if Farmerman is a2k webmaster. But besides that, he is the kind of guy you always want to know. @farmerman I do not know if I have done, but I appreciate you spend part of your valuable time answering our questions and sharing your knowledge, you have been like a teacher to me, I always like to read you. I hope you were not too old, so we could have you so many years.

Im not smart enough to be a mod. I rely on two folks on my staff who are whizzes in developing code and workarounds for my needs.
My ADD requires careful attention in the areas Im semi competent in let alone screw with a computer;s workings.
I recently screqed up a tablet and we almost had to toss it before my one IT master solved what I did. (You can downolad serious mals from an APP--I did not know that)

Im an inch wide and a mile deep . Im always amazed at a guy who keeps our remote data systems working. She is always making the systems work better and in real real time.

A month or so ago, we smashed a 7500$ drone into a mountainside on a project and it took me several weeks to get the insurance coverage to kick in. We now have to hve a "responsible operator as a part timer whenever we use drones) IT was such a great idea.
Couple weeks ago we walked into a store in the mountains after three of us were sucking down helium. We scared the **** out of the woman in the store cause we sounded like the CONEHEADS (I think).

One of my fav shows on TV is "What can Possibly Go Wrong". I think these guys demo why most people go into science .

Thanks for the compliments but I cant fix a flat without an instruction manual.