156 



Mr. F. W. Putnam of Salem made the following com- 

 munication on an 



ANCIENT INDIAN CARVING. 



By the kindness of Dr. Palmer of Ipswich, I am 

 enabled to exhibit a very interesting carved stone, which 

 was found by an elderly lady while hoeing potatoes in 

 her garden located at Turkey Hill, Ipswich. 



Turkey Hill, situated between two small streams, and 

 not fiir from the centre of the town, is a collecting ground 

 well known to our local archaeologists from tlie large num- 

 ber of stone implements that have been found in its 

 immediate vicinity, and is especially noted for the small 

 arrowheads of w^hite quartz and other stone that have 

 been found there in considerable numbers. The dis- 

 covery of the carved stone now exhibited will further 

 identify the locality as one of interest to archaeologists. 



This stone was evidently carved with care for the pur- 

 pose of being worn as an ornament, and was probably 

 suspended from the neck. It is of a soft slate, easily cut 

 with a sharp, hard stone. The markings left in various 

 places by the carver, showing where his tool had slipped, 

 indicate that no very delicate instrument had been used, 

 while the several grooves, made to carry out the idea of 

 the sculptor, indicate as plainly that the instrument by 

 which they were made, had, what we should call, a 

 rounded edge, like that of a dull hatchet, as the grooves 

 were wider at the top than at the l)ottom, and the stria? 

 show that they were made by a sort of sawing motion, 

 or a rubbing of the instrument backwards and forwards. 

 In fact, the carver's tool might have been almost any 

 stone imi)lement, fi-oin an arrowhead to a skin scraper, 

 or any hard piece of roughly chipped stone. 



The figure on the opposite page represents the stone of 

 natural ^ize, its total length being two and a half inches. 



