490 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 3 5 



example, in Maine, that the living representatives of shell species 

 found in abundance in the mounds are today in some cases ap- 

 parently scarce and in other cases certainly smaller.-^ In other 

 places, like Vancouver Island, no appreciable changes are said to have 

 taken place during man's presence ; ^^ but at the northern end of San 

 Francisco Bay the oyster presumably flourished during shell-mound 

 occupation days, though it is now absent ; ^^ and on the Pacific coast 

 of Panama and adjacent parts of South America the culture deposits 

 contain four shell species which have become locally extinct, one of 

 them surviving at present only on the Atlantic side.^^ Equally 

 important suggestions are yielded by the mounds in the shape of 

 vertebrate remains. Bones, e. g. of the extinct Great Auk ^^ and of 

 a certain giant mink ^* are said to occur in the shell-heaps along the 

 Maine coast; likewise bones of the locally extinct wild turkey and 

 other game animals recently hunted down here, as in most of the 

 eastern United States, by the white man. The inland culture de- 

 posits in both caves and mounds rarely contain shell remains, but, 

 as might be supposed, they are fully as rich as the littoral refuse 

 heaps in bird and mammal bones. Nevertheless, in spite of all the 

 apparently favorable circumstances, and in spite also of the reason- 

 able expectations created by the cited paleontological discoveries, no 

 extinct or fossilized animal remains of any real importance have been 

 found in these artificial deposits. The partial exception is the pec- 

 cary, which would appear to have been locally exterminated by native 

 hunters of prehistoric times; but while the species is extinct in the 

 United States, its bones as preserved in our Indian caves are not old 

 enough to have undergone fossilization.^^ We are obliged, therefore, 

 to dismiss this biological approach to our problem with the observa- 

 tion that, like the aspects previously considered, it yields indications 

 of moderate antiquity, but, as a whole, the evidence so far produced 

 tallies with the observations made on such of the corresponding cul- 

 tural deposits in the Old World as are by common consent accepted 

 as of Holocene or Recent geologic date. 



Implemental contents of refuse heaps. — As most important of all, 

 we have finally to consider the nature and condition of the strictly 

 cultural contents of our archeological deposits. If circumstances 

 permitted, we should pass in review, as it were, in stratified chrono- 



2» Abbott, C. C, Primitive industry, P- 445. 



M Smith, H. I., Nat. Mus. Canada, Ann. Rep. 1927, p. 45. 



" Nelson, N. C, Shellmounds of the San Francisco Bay region. Univ. California Publ. 

 Amer. Archseol. and Ethnol., vol. 17, no. 4, p. 337. 



32Llnn6, S., Darien in the past, pp. 127-34, Goteborg, 1929. 



S3 Loomis, F. B., and Young, D. B., Amer. Journ. Sci., vol. 34, pp. 24, 29, 1912 ; Wyman, 

 J., op. cit, p. 578. 



'« Loomis, F. B., Amtr. Journ. Sci., vol. 31, pp. 227-29, 1911. 



s= Mercer, H. C, and Pilsbry, H. A., An exploration of Durham Cave, Pa., Publ. Univ. 

 Pennsylvania, vol. 6, pp. 165, 173-8, 1897. 



