924 GEOLOGY 



were known to have been the customary implements and weapons of 

 the natives of the continent when first invaded by Europeans. 

 Stone axes have been found in abundance in the ancient copper 

 mines of the Lake Superior region, and thus the use of stone and 

 of copper implements is shown to have been contemporaneous; 

 but this was long after the retreat of the last ice-sheet. It is to be 

 noted that the phase of the stone art designated neolithic was 

 dominant on the continent until recent times, and is scarcely yet 

 extinct, and that it was contemporaneous with the "Iron age" of 

 Europe, entirely overlapping the " Bronze age." 



The chief points brought into question by the critical inquiries 

 of recent years are (1) the reference of the ruder artefacs to a stage 

 of art more primitive than that of the Indians and other aborigines, 

 and (2) the reference of the gravels and other superficial formations 

 in which they were found to the glacial period. 



By a series of investigations relative to the first of the points. 

 Holmes l reached the conclusion that the early inhabitants of the 

 country, like the later Indians, resorted habitually to gravel-beds 

 and to outcrops of appropriate rock to procure the raw material 

 for their stone artefacs, and that it was their custom to test and to 

 rough-out the material on the ground, leaving the chippings and 

 the rejected material scattered about when the rough work was 

 done. The more delicate work of shaping the rough material into 

 implements was apparently done as need required, at their dwelling 

 sites or other convenient places to which stone from the quarries 

 was carried. A full series of the stages of manufacture, as thus 

 interpreted, is shown in Fig. 603. 



By virtue of this separation of the process 'of manufacture into 

 two parts, (1) roughing out at the quarries, gravel-beds, etc., 

 and (2) shaping tools at dwelling sites or elsewhere, there arose a 

 geographic separation of the products. The rude failures and 

 rejects, together with the extemporized hammer-stones, cores, flak- 

 ings, and chips, were scattered about the sites of the raw material. 



1 Holmes, W. H., A Stone Implement Workshop, Am. Anthropologist, 

 Vol. Ill, 1890, pp. 1-26; Review of the Evidence Rehtive to AurifWou* 

 Gravel Man in California, Smith. Kept. 1900, pp. 417-17'J: Stone Implement- 

 of the Potomac-Chesapeake Tidewater, Ann. Kept. Bureau of Kth.. isi:; '.!. 

 pp. 1-152, and Jour. Geol., Vol. I. 



