3 o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS. 



By CHAELES C. ABBOTT, M. D. 



IT seems rather hard lines that, even if the archaeologist goes per- 

 sonally into the field, and gathers with his own hands specimens 

 of stone implements, he is not quite free from the possibility of being 

 imposed upon. 



The cause of this unhappy state of affairs is found in several facts, 

 all of which are of such character that it is well-nigh impossible to 

 avoid being misled by them. In the first place, it requires much less 

 skill and practice than is imagined to artistically shape arrow-heads and 

 other small objects, from fragments of jasper and other minerals hav- 

 ing a conchoidal fracture. Many boys, too impatient to gather the 

 relics of the Indians, which requires considerable labor, often practice 

 on broken specimens until they can repoint them, and convert others 

 into handsome examples of scrapers, trimmed flakes, and other forms 

 with which every archaeologist is familiar. Unfortunately, the newly- 

 fractured jasper presents a surface scarcely distinguishable from that 

 of objects made centuries ago, so slowly does the process of weather- 

 ing dull the surface of this flint-like mineral ; and the eager collector, 

 who a week before, it may be, charged the boys on various farms to 

 keep all the relics they could find, receives, in his too great eagerness, 

 as genuine, every specimen of known shapes, and is in nowise deceived 

 in the difference in chipping between the ancient and the modern. In- 

 deed, I greatly doubt if any difference can be detected in such simple 

 forms as triangular arrow-heads, scrapers, trimmed flakes, and knives. 

 I have time and again been shown handsome specimens, which I was 

 assured were made by the exhibitors, and, on expressing some doubt, 

 have had other specimens made in my presence. The skill with which 

 one urchin chipped the characteristic beveled edge of a scraper, using 

 only a small quartz pebble as a hammer or chipper, was marvelous, 

 and I have good reason to believe I have been victimized more than 

 once by this same youngster. Still, the prices usually paid for arrow- 

 heads are not such as to warrant boys generally in undertaking the 

 necessary preliminary practice of chipping flint, and the number of 

 modern chipped implements is relatively not large ; and being, in all 

 cases, imitations of known patterns, they can not mislead. I do not 

 think any of the Flint Jacks whom I have met ever attempted to de- 

 sign new forms, or copy those found in distant localities, a knowledge 

 of which could only be derived from books. If such should become 

 the case, dire confusion must inevitably arise. 



In the case of such implements of stone as were made by pecking 

 away the surface, and subsequently polishing all or portions of the 

 surface, but few attempts to counterfeit have come to my notice. This 



