GENERAL VIEWS ON ARCHAEOLOGY. 301 



even the adult birds, the splinters of which threatened to choke them. 

 Man himself came in doubtless for his share in the matter, for we 

 know of certain persons even nowadays eating whole quails, without 

 taking the trouble to separate the bones. 



The sojourn of man on the Kjoekkenmoedding grounds during the 

 autumn, winter, and spring is also indicated by the degree of growth 

 of the horifs of the deer and roe-buck*, as well as of the embryos and 

 young individuals of these species and of the wild hog, which have been 

 eaten and whose remains are met with. Here again the summer season 

 is not clearly marked, but as the primitive population dwelt on the sea- 

 shore in winter, according to what we have seen, when speaking of 

 the wild swan, it is very likely that it spent the fine season there also, 

 during which it must have been much more comfortable in every 

 respect. 



Man and the products of his Industry. — The Kjoekkenmoedding 

 have never presented any human bones. One may possibly meet with 

 skeletons there, but in that case they belong to those graves, often of 

 very recent date, which the inhabitant of the coast digs for the 

 body of the shipwrecked individual that has been cast up by the sea. 

 No ancient burial place of the age of stone has ever been observed 

 there, and we understand in effect, that the primitive population 

 would not bury its dead in such places. Besides, the numerous tombs 

 of the age of stone in Denmark bear witness, by their often gigantic 

 proportions, as also by their contents, to the respect in which the dead 

 were held. 



It is here worthy of remark, that there has never been observed in 

 Denmark, either in the Kjoekkenmoedding or elsewhere, any signs of 

 cannibalism, though an antiquary supposed that he had found such 

 signs in a cavern in Belgium. 1 If his observations were of value, 

 we might expect that same fact would be observed in other parts of 

 Europe. 



There are sometimes found in the internal mass of the non-stratified 

 Kjoekkenmoedding, as there are in the stratified deposits of the sea- 

 shore, fire-places simply formed of a pavement of pebbles about the 

 size of a man's fist. When we can obtain a quite fresh and clean 

 section of a non-stratified deposit, we sometimes observe on each side 

 of the fire-place a little black band, gradually becoming less distinct. 

 This is made by the coal, which had been swept away when a new fire 

 had to be lighted. These fire-places are not large, they are more or 

 less circular, and their diameter is somewhere about two feet. 



Fragments of a very coarse pottery are not scarce. The vases have 

 been molded by hand, and not by a lathe, and the clay has always been 

 mixed with sand, evidently in order that the vases should not crack 

 easily in the fire. This device is still resorted to by certain savage 

 tribes of America; we find them even, when they cannot get sand, 

 substituting for this purpose a powder of ground-shells. One fact had 

 struck the Danish archasologists, namely: that the grains of sand im- 

 bedded in this pottery are angular, whilst no sand is found in the 

 country but what is rounded by the action of the waves. They then 



1 Royal Academy of Belgium, Tome XX, Nos. 11, 12. 



