Fig. 88. (S. 1–2.) Part of a cache found near Salem, Massachusetts. Material: porphyry. Peabody Museum collection, Salem, Massachusetts.
It is quite apparent that flint implements in which the stem expands from the base are more common in the West and South than in the North, and yet great numbers of both types (stem expanding and stem contracting) are very numerous. It is quite easy to classify most of them on the form of the stem. But others have almost no stem, the barbs being cut in the shoulders of what were at first leaf-shaped, or oval implements. There are not many stems which are concave in the base. Figs. 86 and 99 illustrate several expanding from base types.
Fig. 86 presents seven specimens from the Chesapeake, Virginia, and Maryland region. One of these has a straight base, six of them stem expanding, and all are typical quartzite specimens of the region.
Fig. 112 presents some Southern types from Georgia, North and South Carolina, in the Andover collection. The white quartz and three of the rhyolite specimens have stem expanding, but in some of the small barbed objects the stem contracts. Readers are requested to note the range in material in the South, as these twenty-two specimens show eight variations of four dominating materials, quartz, rhyolite, chert, argillite. Fig. 92, from Professor Holmes’s paper on the Potomac-Chesapeake tidal implements, presents three specimens expanding from base and three contracting. It will be observed that these forms were worked out from leaf-shaped objects, approximately indicated by the dotted lines.
Fig. 89. (S. 3–4.) Finely chipped object of unusual form from Kentucky. Material: concretionary flint. F. Wetherington’s collection, Paducah, Kentucky.
As one studies implements and puts to a severe working test the classification, it becomes clear that while an object may have an expanding stem, yet there are other features which overshadow the mere fact that the stem expands. Fig. 96, from Mr. Mitchell’s collection, shows a specimen in which the point is curved or turned, and the base beveled off sharply to an angle. The same is true of Fig. 93, from Dr. Winship’s collection, Minnesota, only that the base is square and there are no shoulders or barbs. Fig. 89, from Mr. Wetherington’s collection, Kentucky, is another type similar to these I illustrate, and all three are beautifully worked implements of the first grade, and it would be difficult to excel them anywhere in the world.
Fig. 90. (S. 1–2.) New Jersey types found near Orange, New Jersey. The central one is weathered rhyolite. The others are jasper and chert. The two lower ones have prominent stems, and show broad blades. They are very angular. This form is common in Georgia, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, but rare elsewhere. Stephen Van Rensselaer’s collection, Newark, New Jersey.
In the entire West are many small delicate points made of semi-precious stones. A plate of these is shown in Fig. 97, from Mr. Hamilton’s collection, Wisconsin. Here we have the triangular points, oval knives, the expanding at base, the slightly barbed, and the deeply barbed. Figs. 98 and 99 present interesting and yet common types of specimens from a given locality. These range from the triangular to the expanding base and the contracting base; in Fig. 99 a rare specimen having four notches is shown. Fig. 100 presents typical Connecticut forms. The one to the left is a knife. Fig. 102, from Mr. Arnold’s collection, Albany, New York, presents nine beautiful specimens, in nearly all of which the stem is straight. The barbs are very long and wing-like, as in the case of many obsidian, agate, and carnelian points from the Northwest.