STONE AGE IN NEW JERSEY, 357 



not abundant, as they certainly should be, considering the amount of 

 maize grown, had stone been the only material out of which agricultural 

 inaplements were fashioned. 



Chapter XXIII. 



CORN-MILLS, MORTARS AND PESTLES. 



The Indian women, upou whom fell all the drudgery of aboriginal 

 ife, reduced the hard kernels of maize to coarse meal by pound- 

 ing them in hollows of rocks, natural or artificial, with globular peb- 

 bles, or with long cylindrical stones, carefully chipped for the purpose, 

 and known as pestles. Wooden mortars and pestles also were used. 

 We have, perhaps, made a distinction where none exists, in saying "corn- 

 mills" and "mortars," but it appears proper to make this distinction, as 

 the plan i)ursued in meal-making in the two varieties really differs. By 

 corn-mills, we mean small, portable bowlders, that have a shallow hol- 

 low pecked in them, and with which were used oval pebbles held in the 

 band and revolved around the hollow or basin of the mill. This motion 

 ground the corn into coarse meal. By mortars, we refer to the deeper 

 hollows, or basins, which were made in permanent rocks, and with which 

 were used the long, slender, cylindrical pestles, which 'pounded the grain 

 into meal, or, if used for grinding^ were held upright in these deeper 

 basins and a revolving motion given to them. The vast majority of the 

 pestles which we have gathered were polished upon the end only, show- 

 ing that this part alone of the implement was made use of. 



Somewhat south of a line separating New Jersey into its upper hilly 

 and lower level portions, a very marked peculiarity occurs with refer- 

 ence to corn-mills and mortars. In the northern or upper section of 

 the State, where rocks in situ abound, the large flattened stones with 

 cup-shaped depressions (corn-mills) are rare, while deep basins hol- 

 lowed in immovable rocks are very numerous, which is evidence that 

 in the rocky sections of the State the site of a village was chosen with 

 reference to the "mill." Throughout the lower part of the State, on the 

 contrary, rocks in situ are not at all abundant, while in many sections 

 they are entirely absent, especially those suitable for " mills," and here are 

 found stones weighing twenty or more pounds which were brought from 

 a distance ; a receptacle was first chipj)ed on one side, which gradually 

 by use became both deep and smoothly worn. The largest of these 

 portable corn-mills that we have seen was a bowlder of conglomerated 

 sandstone and iron-ore ; it was a cubical mass, two feet by nineteen 

 inches on the upper surface and twenty inches in height. The " basin" 

 measured nine inches in diameter by six in depth. 



Figure 197 represents a fine example of the small mortars, or portable 

 corn-mills. It is a flat, triangular piece of sandstone, somewhat less 

 than nine inches along each side. The upper surface has been ground 

 out until a depression was formed about an inch deep. Associated with 



