STONE ART
By Gerard Fowke
INTRODUCTION.
Basis for the Work.
The collection of the Bureau of Ethnology includes almost every type of stone implement or ornament, and as the investigations and explorations of the collaborators have extended over nearly all the eastern and central portions of the Mississippi valley, it furnishes a substantial basis for showing the geographic distribution of various forms of objects in use among the aboriginal inhabitants.
It has not been deemed advisable to utilize material contained in other collections. Should this be done there would be no reason for drawing upon one rather than another, and if it were once begun the examination would finally extend to every collection made from American localities, a study which, although perhaps desirable, would transcend the scope of the Bureau plans.
Much that has been published in regard to the distribution of relics in various portions of the country is of little value to a paper of this kind, since few of the objects are sufficiently illustrated or referred to any class in other than the most general terms; so that it is frequently impossible to determine the group in which a given article should be placed. Partly for this reason, partly because the primary purpose is description of a certain collection made in a definite way, little space is given to the descriptive work of predecessors in the field of archeology. The general results of previous work are, however, carefully weighed in the conclusions reached.
Classification of Objects and Materials.
The ordinary division into chipped and pecked or ground implements has been adopted: the former including all such as are more easily worked by flaking, and the latter including those made from stone suitable for working down by pecking into form with stone hammers or by similar means. The system of nomenclature in general use has been retained, as it is now familiar to students of North American archeology, and, while not entirely satisfactory in some respects, is perhaps as good as can be devised in the present state of knowledge.
Careful study of the entire collection has failed to show the slightest difference in the form, finish, or material of implements from the same locality, whether found in mounds or graves or on the surface; hence no attempt is made to separate the two classes of objects. Allowance is to be made for the weathering of a surface specimen, but this is the only distinction.
It is not always easy to identify a stone, even with a fresh surface; in a weathered specimen it is often impossible. For this reason the material of which a specimen is made may not be correctly named; frequently the alteration due to exposure will change the appearance of a rock very much, and in such a case the best that can be done is to tell what it looks most like. The material of a majority of specimens however, or at least the classes of rock to which they belong, as granite, porphyry, etc., are correctly named; to give a more exact name would be possible only by the destruction or injury of the specimen. There are a few terms used which may be here explained.