THE ARCHEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF X K\Y YORK 377 



uf wood for thrusting- suggested the spear-shaft, and his experience 

 with cutting stones suggested the spearhead, with which he could 

 more easily kill game or provide himself with a weapon of defense or 

 attack. The game killed required a knife for dressing it and sharp 

 tools were necessary for scraping and cutting skins for garments. 

 Cutting tools were also essential in shaping soft stone into pots, for 

 making wooden vessels, for cutting trees, making bone implements 

 and drilling holes. The pressing need of early man for so manv 

 things gave rise to the art of stone chipping. 



Although many relics of the ancient American remain in the soil 

 all about us, the ordinary observer passes by unnoticed the pottery 

 fragment, or the bone implement, and picks from the ploughed field 

 or water-washed bank the arrowhead which excites his greater 

 admiration. 



The first requisite for making a good chipped implement is appro- 

 priate material. The stone must be hard and have conchoidal frac- 

 ture. It must chip at an acute angle to the medial plane of the mass. 

 The less the angle, the more workable the stone. Flint or chert, 

 quartz, jasper, chalcedony, obsidian, felsite and argillite are all types 

 of stone having a conchoidal fracture. 



To chip properly, the stone should be obtained from a moist place, 

 such as the sea or lake shore, the damp earth, or from veins of rock 

 below the surface exposure. 



Large pebbles were used and larger masses quarried and broken 

 into fragments. These fragments, chipped roughly into blank forms 

 or " blades," were carried into camp for completion. Concerning 

 the quarries of the ancient American, Dr W. H. Holmes, in "Arrows 

 and Arrowmakers," the American Anthropologist for January 

 1891, says: "In Arkansas there are pits dug in solid rock a 

 heavy bedded novaculite to a width of 25 feet or more. In Ohio 

 and other states sfmilar phenomena have been observed. In the 

 District of Columbia extensive quarries were opened in gravel-bear- 

 ing bluffs, and millions of quartzite and quartz boulders secured and 

 worked. The extent of native quarrying has not until recently been 

 realized. Such work has been considered beyond the capacity of 

 savages, and when ancient pits were observed, they were usually 

 attributed to gold hunters of early days, and in the south are still 

 known as ' Spanish diggings.' From Maine to Oregon, from Alaska 

 to Peru, hills and mountains are scarred with pits and trenches. The 

 ancient methods of quarrying are not know-n, and up to the present 

 time no tools have been discovered, save rude stone hammers, impro- 



