Maryland Archeology Month

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Shark's Tooth

Shark's Tooth

Fossil Shark Tooth
Rosenstock Site
Frederick County, MD
(labial surface figured)

This large fossilized shark's tooth was found at the Rosenstock Late Woodland village site (18FR18), in Frederick County, Maryland. It was recovered from the plow zone of a unit that was part of a large block excavated in 1991 during the Annual Field Session in Maryland Archeology, directed by Dennis Curry and Maureen Kavanagh. No features were identified in the unit, although a small basin shaped feature was encountered in an adjacent unit.

The specimen is fragmented into 3 pieces, and is incomplete; one root lobe is missing. The tip is truncated. From the medial root/enamel margin to the truncated tip is 2.5 cm. Projecting to the missing tip indicates that the complete tooth, not including the root, projected 3.1 cm (nearly 1 1/4 inches). From the tip of the root lobe to the medial line measures 2.6 cm, suggesting that the complete specimen would have measured 5.2 cm (2 inches) between the root lobes.

Close examination reveals evidence that the tooth tip is abraded, presumably through prehistoric use. The terminal margin is smooth, rounded and polished. Longitudinal striations are evident under low power magnification on the lingual surface (obverse side from that figured) in a worn facet adjacent to the terminal edge. These patterns indicates that the tooth was repeatedly used to groove or pierce a hard material such as stone, bone or antler, or a gritty abrasive material such as clay. The tooth edge serrations also appear worn, although whether this is from use or from some natural abrasion is not clear. The specimen is without drilled holes (drilled holes are present on two smaller shark's teeth recovered at the Rosenstock village site; presumably this would be for suspension or hafting of the tooth); although the area most commonly drilled (the root) is fractured or not preserved in this specimen.

Curry and Kavanagh (2004, Excavations at the Rosenstock Village Site (18FR18), Frederick County, Maryland: A Preliminary Report. Maryland Archeology Volume 40, Number 1:23) note that several fossil shark's teeth were recovered at Rosenstock. A search of the Maryland archeological site inventory computerized database, which contains only the most cursory inventory information, indicated only four prehistoric sites in Maryland that have yielded shark's teeth. Rosenstock was the only one of the four not on the Eastern Shore. The nearest source of fossil shark teeth for the prehistoric inhabitants of the Rosenstock site would presumably have been the Miocene fossil deposits in Charles County along the Potomac River.