A FAMILY GROUP IN THE STONE AGE
It was thus that the Danish kitchen middens illustrated [on the opposite page] were created. Each family group cast its refuse, in the shape of shells, bones, wood, etc., on the midden near at hand, and these heaps of rubbish in process of time became valuable records of the people’s life, in which the archæologist can read for us the story of the past.
LARGER IMAGE
History in a Rubbish Heap
According to Fraas, it is on this scene that man of the Glacial Period appears; in all probability, a hunter, invited by the presence of the reindeer to spend some time—probably only the better portion of the year—on the borders of ice and snow. It is true that the relic-bed that tells of his life and doings is only a refuse-pit, which contains nothing good in the way of art productions, but only broken or spoiled articles and refuse from the manufacture of implements. The bulk of the material consists of kitchen refuse, such as, besides charcoal and ashes, opened marrow-bones and broken skulls of game. Not one of the bones found here shows a trace of any other instrument than a stone. It was on a stone that the bone was laid, and it was with a stone that the blow was struck. Such breaking-stones came to light in large numbers. They were merely field stones collected on the spot, particular preference being given to finely rolled quartz boulders of about the size of a man’s fist. Others were rather rudely formed into the shape of a club, with a kind of handle, such as is produced half accidentally and half intentionally in splitting large pieces. Larger stones were also found—gneiss slabs, from one to two feet square, slaty Alpine limes, and rough blocks of one stone or another, which had probably represented slaughtering-blocks, or done duty as hearthstones, as on many of them traces of fire were visible. Where these stones had stood near the fire they were scaled, and all were more or less blackened by charcoal. Smaller pieces of slate and slabs of sandstone blackened by fire may have supplied the place of clay pottery in many respects; for, with all the blackened stones, not a fragment of a clay vessel was found in the layers of charcoal and ashes of the relic-bed.
Making Drift Man’s Tools
The flint implements are of the form familiar to us from Taubach and the Somme valley, being simply chipped, not ground or polished. At the source of the Schussen, also, only comparatively small pieces of the precious raw material were found for the manufacture of stone implements. So that here, too, as at Taubach, Lyell’s third form, the knife or flake, was practically the only one represented. They fall into two groups—pointed lancet-shaped knives and blunt saw-shaped stones. The former served as knife-blades and dagger-blades, and lance-heads and arrow-heads; the latter represented the blades of the tools required for working reindeer horn. The larger implements are between one and a quarter and one and a half inches broad and three to three and a half inches long; but the majority of them are far smaller, being about one and a half inches long and only three-eighths of an inch broad. The various flint blades appear to have been used in handles and hafts of reindeer horn. Numerous pieces occur which can only be explained as such handles, either ready or in course of manufacture.
Moreover, owing to the want of larger flints, numerous weapons, instruments, and implements were carved from reindeer horn and bone for use in the chase and in daily life. Fraas has ascertained exactly the technical process employed in producing articles of reindeer horn, and we see with wonder how the Glacial men of Swabia handled their defective carving-knives and saws on the very principle of modern technics. They are principally weapons—for example, long pointed bone daggers, otherwise mostly punchers, awls, plaiting-needles (of wood), and arrow-heads with notched grooves. These may possibly be poison-grooves; other transverse grooves may have served partly for fastening the arrow-head by means of some thread-like binding material, probably twisted from reindeer sinews, as is done by the Reindeer Lapps at the present day; other scratches occur as ornaments.
The Skilled Workman of the Drift
The forms of the bone implements show generally a decided sense of symmetry and a certain taste. For instance, a dagger, with a perforated knob for suspension, and a large carefully-carved fish-hook. Groove-like or hollow spoon-shaped pieces of horn were explained by Fraas to be cooking and eating utensils; probably they also served for certain technical purposes—as for dressing skins for clothing and tents, like the stone scrapers found in the Somme valley. A doubly perforated piece of a young reindeer’s antler appears to be an arrow-stretching apparatus, like those generally finely ornamented, used by the Esquimaux for the same purpose. A branch of a reindeer’s antlers, with deep notches filed in, is declared by the discoverer to be a “tally.” The notches are partly simple strokes filed in to the depth of a twelfth of an inch, and partly two main strokes connected by finer ones. “The strokes,” says Fraas, “are plainly numerical signs—a kind of note, probably, of reindeer or bears killed, or some other memento.” Among the objects found were also pieces of red paint of the size of a nut—clearly fabrications of clayey ironstone, ground and washed, and probably mixed with reindeer fat and kneaded into a paste. The paint crumbled between the fingers, felt greasy, and coloured the skin an intense red. It may have been used in the first instance for painting the body. The Glacial men at the source of the Schussen were, according to the results of these finds, fishermen and hunters, without dogs or domestic animals and without any knowledge of agriculture and pottery. But they understood how to kindle fire, which they used for cooking their food. They knew how to kill the wild reindeer, bear, and other animals of the district they hunted over; their arrows hit the swan, and their fish-hooks drew fish from the deep. They were artists in the chipping of flint into tools and weapons; with the former they worked reindeer horn in the most skilful manner. Traces of binding material indicate the use of threads, probably prepared from reindeer sinews; the plaiting-needle may have been employed for making fishing-lines. Threads and finely-pointed pricking instruments indicate the art of sewing; clothing probably consisted of the skins of the animals killed.