210 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF [May-Oct., 



(Plate VII, fig. 5), or even absent (Plate VII, figs. 2, 6, 7) at one 

 extremity. 



Judged by material alone, all might be classed as paint-stones, 

 for they are quite capable of rendering a red or red-brown paint. 

 But, in that case, why were they ground into so special a form when 

 any irregular shape would serve, as witness other specimens of 

 identical material which bear evidence of such usage and which 

 were collected from the same fields (Plate IX) ; while, on the other 

 hand, an occasional artifact, not of iron-ore but of ordinary sand- 

 stone (Plate VIII, figs. 7, 8, 9), or even of fine-grained quartzite 

 (Plate VIII, fig. 6), may offer the same general characters. 



One quality is common to all the pieces under consideration, 

 whatever their composition or their contour — namely grit. This 

 would indicate that they were hones of convenient form for the 

 dressing and finishing of small tools such as awls, needles, fish-hooks, 

 etc. Only occasionally, however, do they exhibit the grooves on 

 their flat surfaces which are attributed to the sharpening and point- 

 ing of such tools (Plate VII, fig. 10, Plate VIII, fig. 5.). Moore- 

 head, in "The Stone Age in North America,"^ figures two sandstone 

 arrow- and needle-sharpeners from North Dakota, which have the 

 form of the Alabama pieces under discussion, but are grooved from 

 end to end on the face. It may be added that two of the irregular 

 paint stones (or hones?), referred to above (Plate IX, figs. 6, 8) 

 exhibit fine striae, apparently made by such work in sharpening 

 tools, in one instance (Fig. 8), the groove having been partly ob- 

 literated by later grinding. 



This usage leaves unexplained the notch upon the ends. Obvi- 

 ously it could not have served for the attachment of a thong to pre- 

 vent loss for the notch is perpendicular to the flat surface of the 

 tool, so that a thong would have traversed its working plane in all 

 cases save in one piece, a very crude one, showing little use — an 

 unthinkable attachment. Such is believed to have been the pur- 

 pose of the groove which lies along the periphery of the beautiful 

 boat-shaped hones and tool trimmers of Neolithic Scandinavia.* 



The only hematite known to the writer, which appears to belong 

 to this class, is in the Andover collection, and is described by Moore- 

 head,"* as "a grooved hematite object, the groove extending around 



2 Vol. II, p. 314. 

 'Nilsson, The "Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia" (Nilsson on the Stone 

 Age, edited by Sir John Lubbock), pp. 14, 15, PI. I, fig. 8. 

 4 Op. cit. II, p. 306, fig. 700. 



