HAWKES AND LINTON A PRE-LENAPE SITE IN NEW JERSEY 53 



of Mercer's monograph may be compared with the fish spears 

 in Plate XVII, I, J, K, L. 



In our excavation, however, this was not the dominant 

 form, the "diamond-shaped" point being most numerous. 

 The occurrence of two potsherds at this level may mark the 

 beginnings of pottery, as in our intermediate level. No jasper 

 was found in our excavations in either the lowest or intermediate 

 levels, but the predominance of argillite (427 to 7) in Mercer's 

 lower village layer, and the presence of a small quartzite blade 

 and worked quartzite pebbles, links his finds with ours as far 

 as material is concerned. 



The material from which the specimens at the lower level 

 were made came from the river drift and not from the adjacent 

 quarries, according to Mercer. "As to the quarries, granted 

 that they were connected with the blade-thinning work-shops, 

 the presence of these shops on the upper layer and surface, 

 and their absence on the lower layer, would indicate that the 

 quarries, with all the cultural significance that they involve, 

 belong to the time of the upper layer only, and that the people 

 of the lower site, obtaining their material from the neighboring 

 beaches, had not known or worked them." Whether the 

 argillite users of our lowest level obtained their material from 

 river drift in the same way, or from the quarries around Trenton 

 cannot be determined. The frequency with which inferior 

 material was used, and the manner in which the few rejects 

 had been made available by secondary chipping, seems to 

 indicate that material was scarce. 



Mercer, in considering the question whether the people 

 of the lower village were forerunners of the Lenape of the 

 upper village, has had resource to the legends of that people, 

 as preserved by Heckwelder (Indian Nations, p. 51) and the 

 Walum Olum, or Painted Stick Chronicle. 



"The latter curious record, whose authenticity is tolerably 

 well established, places eleven chiefs between the arrival of 

 the Lenape in the Delaware Valley and the coming of white 

 man (say Hudson, in 1609); and if we give twenty years to 



