AMERICAN MUSEUMS 



tiquity has run almost a parallel course in America 

 and in Europe. The early discoveries of Schmerling and 

 Godwin-Austen compare with those of the Natchez 

 human bones in the Mississippi loess, and of arrow- 

 heads, pottery, and burnt wood in close connection with 

 skeletons of the mastodon. The kitchen-middens of 

 Denmark are far less extensive than the shell-heaps of 

 New England, Florida, and Alaska; while the dis- 

 coveries in the lake-dwellings, peat-bogs, and tumuli may 

 be compared with the still more extensive finds in the 

 " mounds " of the great valley of the Mississippi. Even 

 the mysterious structures at Stonehenge, on Dartmoor, 

 and in Brittany, are not more mysterious than some of 

 the animal mounds or extensive systems of earthworks of 

 Ohio and Illinois, nor offer more difficult problems than 

 the sculptures and hieroglyphics of Central American 

 and Mexican temples. 



Before giving a brief sketch of the varied specimens 

 which illustrate the history of early man in America, it may 

 be well to state the character of the museums in which 

 they may be best studied the Peabody Museum of 

 American Archeology and Ethnology at Cambridge, 

 Massachusetts, and the Museum of Prehistoric Archaeology 

 at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. These 

 two museums illustrate very distinct methods of arrange- 

 ment, each of which has its advantages. At Cambridge 

 the collections are arranged according to localities or 

 areas. Everything found in one mound, or group of mounds, 

 is kept together, so as to illustrate, as far as possible, the 

 life history of the constructors. Surface finds are grouped 

 according to States or districts ; the instruments, bones, 

 shells, &c., of the shell-heaps are similarly arranged ; the 

 same is done with objects found in caves, in stone-graves, in 

 the old Pueblo villages, &c. In the words of the curator, 

 Mr. F. W. Putnam : 



"A natural classification has been attempted, grouping together 

 objects belonging to each people. By this method is brought out 

 the ethnological value of every object in the museum, so that in the 

 mind of the student each is put into the great mosaic of human 

 history. Thus it is that throughout the arrangement of the museum 



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