ARTIFICIAL SHELL-DEPOSITS IN NEW JERSEY. 
BY CHARLES RAU, OF NEW YORK. 
Ir has frequently been observed that there exists a certain resemblance be- 
tween archeology and geology, notwithstanding the different character of the 
results obtained by these sciences, and the parallelism which they exhibit is 
really of suflicient distinctness to justify a comparison. By examining the 
petrified remains of animals and plants that are found in the layers composing 
the crust of the earth the geologist determines the different phases in the history 
of our planet; while the student of archzology, in endeavoring to throw light 
on the former condition of mankind, has to rely in a great measure on the ruins 
of buildings, on earthworks, implements of various kinds, organic remains, and 
other traces left by those who passed away long ago from the scene of life. 
But even in the results of the two sciences the analogy is not entirely wanting, 
in so far as the geologist, though succeeding in establishing the relative age of 
the strata, is unable to determine with any degree of certainty the time that 
was required to form the stony shells surrounding our globe; and in treating 
of ante-historic periods, the archzologist, likewise, is at a loss to fix the period 
when a people existed, of whose conditions of life, manners, and domestic 
habits he can give the most satisfactory account. I will mention in this place 
only two recent discoveries in archeology, namely, the lacustrine villages of Switz- 
erland, Italy, and Germany, and the Kjoekkenmoeddings or refuse-heaps occur- 
ring on the Danish islands. In both cases we obtain, by the minute researches 
and ingenious conclusions of scientific investigators, a knowledge of certain 
populations concerning whom history is entirely silent; and while we have be- 
come acquainted with their character and manner of living, we neither know 
their names, nor are we able to determine the period when they inhabited those 
places which abound with tokens of their former existence. The lake-dwell- 
ings as well as the Kjoekkenmoeddings have been described in the Smithsonian 
publications* and elsewhere, and it would be useless to enlarge here on these 
subjects; but as I intend in this sketch to treat of American remains similar 
to the Kjoekkenmoeddings, I will merely devote a few words to the latter memo- 
rials of antiquity. On the coasts of the Danish islands and along the fjords of 
Jutland there occur extensive heaps of shells, mostly of the oyster, which were 
considered for a long time as formations of the sea, until of late their artificial 
character was established by Danish savans, who proved them to be the accu- 
mulated refuse of the repasts of a people that dwelt in former ages, beyond the 
record of history, on the shores of these islands. 3 
The indications of the artificial origin of these shell-heaps chiefly consist in 
a total absence of stratification which always characterizes marine deposits, and 
in the fact that the rubbish contains rude flint implements, fragments of coarse 
pottery, fireplaces, charcoal, cinders, and the bones of various animals, some 
of which are now extinct in those parts, as for instance the urus, (Bos urus 
or primigenius,) beaver, and auk or penguin, (Alca impennis, Lin.) But 
neither bronze nor iron has been discovered in these places, from which it may 
be inferred that the inhabitants were unacquainted with the use of metals, and 
* Annual Smithsonian Reports for 1860 and 1861. 
