Fig. 251. (S. about 1–3.) It seems to me that not a few axes were made from chipped or broken fragments of rock. Doubtless some were the result of working down rejects or angular fragments. But most of them are water-worn pebbles, slightly flat, and generally oval. The axe owned by S. D. Mitchell, of Ripon, Wisconsin, and shown in this figure, is a splendid example of the pebble grooved, pecked, and ground to an edge. This implement is just as serviceable as the highly polished axe. Moreover, the form is slightly adze-like. The longer it was in use, the more even and polished would become the surfaces.
Throughout New England and Pennsylvania there are many
axes which might be placed in the class of chipped objects; for a
chipped object may be an axe as well as something else. And for
that matter there are shell and bone arrow-heads, yet they are not
placed in the class, “chipped objects.”
Fig. 252. (S. 1–3.); showing two broad, short axes from near Salem, Massachusetts. The material is porphyry and diorite. Both of these were originally much longer, became broken, and were worked down. Peabody Museum, Salem, collection.
Fig. 253. (S. 1–6.) Two ordinary short axes and three long narrow axes approaching the grooved gouge in form. At the top is a narrow double-edged celt-like object. Collection of A. E. Kilbourne, East Hartford, Connecticut.
Fig. 254. (S. 1–4.) Illustrating six axes from the collection of W. A. Holmes of Chicago. Five are of the flat back and one with the groove entirely surrounding the specimen. The ridges on either side of the grooves are of varying prominence. These six axes are from Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky.
Fig. 255. (S. 1–3.) Two large axes from the collection of H. M. Braun, East St. Louis, Illinois. The specimen to the left is of Classes “B” and “C,” being both grooved and pointed. Similar large axes have been found in Ohio, and one or two weighing as much as twenty pounds are in the Smithsonian collection, and one of about sixteen pounds in the collection of the Ohio State University.
“All artifacts are the resultant of an interaction between several factors,—character of the rock, need of the worker, form of the blank selected, skill of the worker. If the tool-maker was in a hurry for a utensil he would be likely to choose material easier to work than ordinarily would be the case,—material that he could shape hurriedly. If he were not skilful he would spend time to look for a blank that was a close approximation to the desired tool, that he might be spared the necessity of shaping it with his unskilled fingers. This would often mean the selection of poorer material than might have been the case under different circumstances. Primitive man, as a recent writer has pointed out, had to exercise more real mental acumen and sagacity, had to be more agile and alert and bring into action more varied qualities of mind and body in order to live, than the great mass of our present population. He used his mind and his judgment in the selection of materials, he weighed all of the pros and cons in the choice of materials for artifacts, just as he did in all the concerns of life. A prevailing notion that he picked up any old stray piece of rock that came conveniently to his hand is a mistake; his choices were results of purpose and intellectual effort. To illustrate my position, allow me to select one type of tool, the grooved axe, and discuss the choice of materials for that particular utensil. It must be borne in mind that early man in Wisconsin rarely used quarried material for axes, he sought rather for water-worn or ice-worn cobbles, and made the axe from these partially shaped and polished forms. It must also be remembered that there are three general classes of rocks, viz.: the igneous, clastic, and the metamorphic. The igneous rocks are of two general types, the coarser-grained intrusives, such as the granites, and the finer textured extrusives like basalts and their close relatives the diabases, though the latter is often quite coarsely crystalline.