PREHISTORIC ART. 



435 



Pike County, Illinois, and was found by Mr. Brainard Mitcliel. Its 

 leugtli is 10:^ inches. 



Obsidian.— The art of chipping required such material as was homo- 

 geneous and would break with a clear fracture. All that did so broke 

 with a conchoid. Obsidian pos- 

 sessed these qualifications. Itbroke 

 with a sharp, smooth edge and a 

 clear fracture, and was, with flint, 

 a favorite with the prehistoric stone- 

 chipping artist. The United States 

 National Museum possesses hun- 

 dreds of cores or nuclei of obsidian 

 and thousands of flakes which have 

 been struck therefrom. The cores 

 are 6 or 7 inches in length and un- 

 der. Some have had flakes struck 

 off all round, and others only part 

 way. These flakes have all been 

 knocked ott" by a blow at the top, 

 each blow making a flake. There 

 are as many as sixteen flakes which 

 have been struck from a single core, 

 and this has been repeated in lesser 

 numbers among many cores. The 

 difficulty of this work and the art 

 displayed in its performance is man- 

 ifested by the fact that the artist 

 was able to reproduce these cores 

 and flakes in the large and indefi- 

 nite numbers suggested. He seemed 

 to be able to determine the size and 

 weight of his hammer and manipu- 

 late the blow with sufficient force 

 and accuracy to repeat the result 

 any number of times, producing at 

 his pleasure hundreds or thousands 

 of specimens practically alike. 

 Plate 28 represents selections of 

 these cores and flakes. These par- 

 ticular specimens are from Mexico, 

 but similar ones have been found 

 throughout the Rocky Mountain region of the United States and on 

 the Pacific Coast, and are not uncommon in every part of the world 

 where this material is obtainable. The island of Crete is notable for 

 the number of these objects, though they are all small. Fig. 88 repre- 

 sents a large hooked implement of obsidian from Tepoxtlan, Mexico. 



