886 PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. . 



The only effort at drilling or piercing that I have found among the 

 rubbish is a piece of yellow fluorspar 2 inches long, roughly rounded to 

 1^ inches diameter ; in one end a hole one-fourth inch in diameter has 

 been drilled three-foui-ths inch deep ; at the other end, a hole one-eighth 

 inch diameter and only one-fourth inch deep. Many pierced implements 

 have been found at or near dwelling sites associated with this flint man- 

 ufactory, such as banner stones split through the drilled eye; some split 

 fragments of tubes of great length, made out of hard schistose slate. 



Among the waste are pieces of specular iron ore from Missouri, in ev- 

 idence that it was worked here, probably into axes and weights or plumb- 

 bobs. There is also evidence that argillaceous iron ore, the clay iron 

 stone or carbonates of the coal measures, was a material extensively 

 used. From the various forms of much oxidized pieces that I have found 

 that will not bear handling, they appear to have been cutting or carving 

 tools, probably used in the manulactories ; though axes and celts made 

 from this material are occasionally found in the vicinity of the salt licks, 

 always deeply oxidized, peeling off in flakes that conform to the origi- 

 nal form of the implement. 



Many scooped or hollowed out blocks of sandstone or large flattish 

 river bowlders, mostly sunk on both sides, that are classed as mortars 

 for crushing corn, and with them crushing stones and pestles, have been 

 plowed up on this flaking ground, but they are much more abundant on 

 the dwelling portion of the ridge ; also river pebbles partly pecked to 

 an edge for celts, some of them roughly grooved for axes ; but what 

 surprised me most was the great number of what have been called 

 cup-stones, by some nut-stones. These are frequently found scattered 

 over Southern Illinois and Western Kentucky, and occasionally on all 

 the tributaries of the Mississippi. But here they are found in mass. 

 When the ground was first put under cultivation none were seen, 

 and it was not until the great denuding floods had passed over it that 

 they were exposed. On finding, just above the surface of the ground, 

 the face of a fine specimen that showed a number of cups, I loosened 

 and turned it over to examine the cups on the under side, and found it 

 was lying on top of another. With pick and spade I soon exposed a 

 group or pile of over twenty, and with them a number of slabs of the same 

 sandstone that showed marks of having been used as rub or grind- 

 stones, all from the millstone-grit series from the bluffs on the opposite 

 side of the Saline. Further research developed a number of such piles, 

 some only having the cup-like indentations, as illustrated at page 40 of 

 !No. 287 of the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge 5 others having 

 a center depression of from 4 to 6 inches in diameter, similar to the rude 

 mortars with the cups irregularly arranged around them. Subsequent 

 overflows exposed many scattered over the entire flaking ground; they 

 varied in size from large pebbles with a single cup on opposite sides, 

 known to the early settlers as having been used by the Indians as nut- 

 stones, up to massive slabs, having from two up to eight and ten cups 



