Fig. 217. (S. 1–1.)
A red and brown obsidian blade, found on the shore of
Goose Lake, California, by the Reverend H. C. Meredith, in
1905. H. K. Deisher’s collection, Kutztown, Pennsylvania.
A study of chipped implements of the varieties presented in the foregoing pages opens up a field of research of great possibilities. A comparison of types, an examination of material—in other words, the same technical work that classical scholars spend in research into certain phases of Greek and Roman archæology—will lead to important results. For instance, chips of a certain stone, which appear to have come from Labrador, are said to be found occasionally in Maine or Massachusetts. If this statement is true, it leads us to question whether the Eskimo and the New England natives bartered, or whether there was a migration in earliest times from Labrador to New England, or vice versa. Or, whether the stone is found in New England as well as in Labrador.
The Ozark Mountain region, a strange country about sixty miles in extent, where Dr. Peabody and myself found evidence of culture different from any other existing in this country, contains two kinds of chipped material: that found on the surface generally, and that which occurs in the caves and caverns occupied by man. The one can be differentiated from the other. Both might be called “flint,” or “chert,” and yet each came from a different site and represents a different culture.
Entirely too much has been made of the fact that chipped implements of various kinds have been seen in the possession of modern Indians the past two hundred years. As an illustration of how the modern Indian has drifted away from the past, and in support of my contention that his present condition, while entertaining and interesting, is of little value to archæology, I desire to call attention to one who is more competent to pass upon this subject than many white persons who have written regarding it. Dr. Charles A. Eastman, a full-blooded Sioux Indian, himself a scholar who has given many years to a careful study of the traditions of his own people, informs me that his grandfather repeatedly stated that all the Sioux record-keepers were insistent in their statements that the arrow- and spear-points found by them on the Plains were made and used by earlier tribes, and that they always considered them as “mystery stones” and had no tradition with regard to their use.
I predict that the day is coming when our museums will be filled with specimens; when most of the sites shall have been explored. Men will then turn their attention to a detailed study of the chipped objects on exhibition. They will make tables of these, they will measure them, they will subdivide the materials, giving each a different name. At present we call by the general term “chert” a dozen different colors and textures which to the practiced eye represent different sites. The precise meaning of all these forms and the reason for the selection of colors or varieties, will some day, I am persuaded, become clear.
CHAPTER XV
GROUND STONE
POLISHED STONE HATCHETS OR CELTS—THE CLASSIFICATION OF HATCHETS, ADZES, GOUGES, AND AXES
Under the general term “ground stone” fall all objects not chipped; as well as utensils, weapons, ornaments, and artifacts not of copper, bone, shell, mica, etc. The term “ground stone” would include axes, celts, pestles, mortars, and a score of other types.
But I confine this and the next three chapters to the celt-hatchet-axe-adze class of artifacts or tools, and have presented my own classification of these.