OF THE LAKE OF NEUCHATEL. 



Meanwhile, the tribes of the age of stone were not reduced to the sole care 

 of providing for their existence. However mean might be their arms and uten- 

 sils, the requirements of personal decoration were not wholly neglected, as is 

 attested by certain ornaments made of stone or of bone. These could of course 

 be but very simple, being the teeth of cai-niverous animals pierced with a hole, 

 and worn, doubtless, in the manner 



^%. 



of a collar, intermingled with disks 

 or beads of bone or buckhorn sim- / 

 ilarly pierced, (Fig. 20.) Pins for 

 the hair occur, not deticient in a / 

 certain degree of- elegance, nor dif- \ 

 fering much from those worn at,', 

 present, as is witnessed by that 

 represented above, and which comes 

 from the station of Concise, (Fig. 

 11.) At other times, a pin was 

 cut from the rib of a stag or roe, 

 which, besides the head, had a pro- 

 tuberance pierced with an eye. 

 (Fig. 206.) Figure 20a. 



Lastly, domestic industry is attested by a quantity of small disks pierced 

 with a hole, which Ave believe to have been spindle whirls rather than weights 

 for fishing nets. (Fig. 21.) However this may be, it is not superfluous to re- 

 mark that at the lake of 

 Neuchfitel these disks 

 are always of stone 

 (preferably of molassic 

 sandstone ; sometimes 

 of limestone) in the sta- Figure 206. 



tions of the age of stone, while they are of baked earth in the palafittes of the 

 age of bronze.* (Fig. 21.) 



If the teuevieres of our lake and of western Switzerland have not yet afforded 

 a specimen of the thread which was spun by means of these whirls, such is not 

 the case with the canton of Zurich, where are found not only skeins of thread, 

 but numerous remains of webs, tissues, and nets, all of flax. It does not appear 

 that wool was ever spun. 



Nor was the ground left uncultivated in the age of stone, as is attested by the 

 remains of cereals which are found here and there in our tenevieres. M. Gilli- 

 eron has collected in the archseological stratum of the Pont de Thielle very fine 

 grains of wheat, carbonized like the peat which surrounds them. The stations 

 of eastern Switzerland, and especially that of Robenhausen, on Lake Pftefikon, 

 are in this respect of the highest interest. The conditions are here so favorable 

 to the preservation of vegetable products that it has been practicable to make 

 ample collections of fruits of all kinds — apples, cherries, beech nuts, seeds 

 of the strawberry and raspberry, and large quantities of the water chestnut, 

 ( Trapa nutans,) which must have been common in the lakes, while at present 

 it is found only at two points north of the Alps — near Langenthal and Elgg. 

 In the bread found there the grain is but imperfectly crushed, as in the pum- 

 pernickel of Westphalia, so that it is possible to recognize the species of cereal 

 of which it is composed. The bread of Robenhausen is of wheat. Of late 

 that of millet has been also discovered. All these vegetable remains have been 



* Quite recently Dr. Ullersberger has collected some of these disks in baked earth at the 

 station of stone, at Ueherliugen, on Lake Constance, but their shape is diiferent from that 

 of the age of bronze; they ai"e true disks, slightly convex, while those of the age of bronze 

 are conic. 



