I present several illustrations showing the method of hammering the rough turtleback and partly finished blades and the completed forms. These are from Professor Holmes’s paper. In addition I show hammer-stones and blades from the collection of Phillips Academy, Andover, representing similar work on other sites.
The difference to be noted between Piney Branch material and the material of chert and flint, the working of which is described by Mr. George Sellars, in Chapter IV, page [48], of this book, is considerable, and the probable method of treatment varies in a more marked degree. Apparently there was more pecking, hammering, etc., of these rude forms than in the case of flint and chert. That is, flint and chert lent themselves more readily to the flaker’s art.
The quarry at Piney Branch was productive of large numbers of rejects. This is true of other sites as well, but it would seem that where material was scarce, the natives made use of many objects quite as crude as those we have designated as rejects. Only flawless materials seem to have been made into implements at Piney Branch, at Flint Ridge, on the Little River sites in Tennessee, and about the jasper quarries of Pennsylvania. This is natural when one reflects that there was a wealth of material and that the Indian naturally selected the best. But were these objects, blocks of flint, and objects of all kinds deposited in any of the large prehistoric villages, I am confident that much of the material called by Professor Holmes rejects, would have been made use of. I think we have overlooked the significance of this fact in our archæological studies. On the Great Plains, and at certain places in Texas, about the Mandan sites, and elsewhere, there are implements quite as rude and ill-shaped as many of those illustrated in the several reports as rejects, yet which show unmistakable evidence of usage.
Fig. 34. (S. about 2–3.) Scrapers and rejects from an ancient workshop near Swarts, on the Rio Mimbres, New Mexico. Material, unknown. There are ancient ruins near by. Phillips Academy collection. (Clement L. Webster.)
Again, the turtlebacks and discs and the other materials may be in part rejects, and yet may represent material blocked out for transportation. I have always been a firm believer in the theory that, as most of the flint was carried on the backs of Indians, or transported in canoes from one point to another, the discs, turtlebacks, and other forms which had been quickly blocked out by a few strokes of the stone hammer, represented material to be transported to distant villages and there refashioned. We may explain the quantity of such material on all these quarry sites by means of a dozen different theories. The workers blocked out more than they could transport; they were interrupted during the course of their labors by the enemy; they were prevented from returning; they found that the home villages were supplied with knives, and arrow-points, and did not return to the quarries for another supply; and so on. That much of the material of quarries is rejects and refuse no one will deny, but that all of it is to be so classed I do not believe.
Fig. 35. (S. 1–1.) Flake knife. Frank L. Grove, Delaware, Ohio.
There seems to be no evidence that Flint Ridge, Piney Branch, Little River, the Indian Territory quarries, or other sites were worked in historic times. On the contrary, one may believe that the quarries developed through a long period of time. The very character of them seems to indicate this. If America has been peopled for thousands of years, I can see no reasons against the suggestion that the quarries were discovered three or four thousand years ago, that a few Indians visited them each season, or at intervals, and that quarrying ceased about the year 1600. While this is my opinion merely, yet I have given the subject a great deal of thought. If all the material in a certain region came from a special quarry, no long period of time could be assigned that quarry. But an inspection of village-sites, of local collections, of museum collections, will teach the observer that not only is there present material from the local quarry, but there is also a considerable quantity of chipped implements of flint, or chert, or quartz, or rhyolite, or jasper, or other stones which are not native to the locality. Not one site, but many sites furnished material. It is evident from the abundance of chipped material that river boulders, the talus of bluffs, and drift pebbles furnish a great part of the chipped implements of this country. If the Indian found a suitable pebble or block of flint or fragment of stone, he most certainly would fashion that into an implement rather than travel a considerable distance and work laboriously to produce that which was found nearer home. Because of the observations cited above, I cannot believe that the quarries represent the work of aboriginal man during a few generations, but that they indicate, perhaps, three or four thousand years of occupation. Dr. W. C. Barnard, of Seneca, Missouri, has given the subject much study. He contributes his observation as follows:—
