302 



GENERAL VIEWS ON ARCHEOLOGY. 



remarked that the granitic stones of the fire-places, when they had 

 been subjected to the action of fire, were easily reducible to coarse 

 angular sand, corresponding exactly to that found in the pottery. 



Mr. Emilien Dumas de Sommieres, (department du Clard.) a much- 

 esteemed geologist, and a great connoisseur in pottery, has observed a 

 very great diversity of materials mixed with the paste of the ancient 

 pottery. These substances seem to vary according to the fhineralogi- 

 cal character of the region. Thus it is that in the departments of the 

 Gard, Vaucluse, and Bouches-du-Khone, the ancient pottery contains 

 generally little rhomboidal fragments of white spathic carbonate of 

 lime. In Auvergne, in the Vivarais, and even at Agde, near Mont- 

 pellier, where there exist also ancient traces of volcanic eruptions, the 

 place of calcareous spar is supplied in the ancient pottery by volcanic 

 scoria (peperino.) Lastly, in Corsica, a few years since ; they made 

 use of amianthus in the manufacture of common pottery, which gave 

 it great toughness and tenacity, and enabled it to resist most effica- 

 ciously the effects of a blow or of irregular dilatation. Amianthus is 

 also found mingled witli the paste of some Chinese vases of common 

 manufacture. It is likewise known that the walls of Babylon and 

 certain constructions of ancient Egypt were built of bricks dried in 

 the sun. In making these bricks they added to the sandy clay which 

 composes them, chopped straw, and even fragments of reeds and other 

 marsh plants, in order to produce greater strength in the mass. Be- 

 sides, this necessity for the addition of straw is well-established by 

 the fifth chapter of Exodus, which alludes to the refusal of the king 

 of Egypt to furnish the Israelites with the straw required for their 

 work. 



The age of stone, as we know, is characterized preeminently by the 

 presence of arms and instruments of flint, or of some other kind of 

 stone, and which are frequently of beautiful workmanship, especially 

 in the islands of Denmark. Now, in the Kjoekkenmoedding , it is true 

 that there are found a great abundance of instruments of silex, but 

 they are so very rough and unshapely, that one might take them at a 

 first glance -for mere pieces of .stone. Nevertheless, with a little atten- 

 tion and comparison it becomes easy to recognize them as wedges or 

 hatchets, chisels, and especially those long and narrow splinters called 

 knives. All these objects are simply hewn by hand, by successive 

 blows with another stone; they are of coarser workmanship than 



*'ig. 4. Fig. 5. 



Very rough wedges. 



