ARTIFICIAL SHELL-DEPOSITS. 35 



charcoal and ashes. The coast-people manufactured a kind of very primitive 

 pottery, fragments of which are found commingled with the shells. The clay is 

 always mixed with coarse sand, produced by the trituration of stones, and added 

 for the purpose of preventing the cracking of the vessels while in the fire. 



The Danish kjo'kkenmodclings have yielded a number of awls, chisels, comb- 

 shaped articles, and other tools made of horn and bone, and in great abundance 

 chipped flint implements, such as flakes, piercers, lance-head-shaped objects, 

 slingstones(?), and notably axes of a peculiar shape, and therefore called "shell- 

 mound axes." They probably served in opening bivalves. I am not aware 

 that any objects directly referable to fishing, such as fish-hooks, harpoon- 

 heads, sinkers, etc., have occurred among the refuse. The flint implements are 

 mostly of a rude character, and inferior to the well-finished specimens of chipped 

 flint so frequent in Denmark. Polished stone implements, however, are not 

 entirely wanting in the kitchen- middens. Taking into account, additionally, the 

 fauna of the period, presently to be considered, it may not be amiss to refer the 

 Danish kitchen-middens provisionally to the early part of the neolithic period. 

 Messrs. Worsaac and Steenstrup themselves are not quite in accord concerning 

 the antiquity of the Danish kitchen-middens. While the last-named gentleman 

 attributes them to the dolmen-builders, the former considers them as belonging 

 to an earlier epoch.* There is no evidence that man lived in the Scandinavian 

 North during quaternary times.f 



The coast-people certainly led a very rude life, being, as it appears, unac- 

 quainted with agriculture, and compelled to subsist entirely on the spoils of the 

 sea and the forest. No traces of carbonized cereals have been found in the 

 kitchen-middens ; but masses of what is thought to be the residue of burned 

 eel-grass (Zostera marina, Lin.) occur in their immediate neighborhood. Not 

 many centuries ago, salt was produced on the Danish sea-shores by sprinkling 

 sea-water over burning heaps of this marine plant ; and hence it is thought the 

 ancient coast-dwellers had obtained salt by the same process. It is not quite 

 certain whether these people inhabited the sea-board only in summer or during 

 the whole year, though the character of the bones and antlers, which belong to 

 animals of different ages, would favor the view that they lived there through 

 successive seasons. Although they derived their sustenance mainly from the 

 sea, the bones of mammals and birds scattered through the refuse show that 

 the chase furnished a part of their provisions. The list of the former comprises 

 the stag, roe, wild boar, urns, dog, fox, wolf, marten, otter, porpoise, seal, water- 



* Bulletins du Congres d'Archeologie Prehistorique a Copenhaguo en 1869 ; Copenhagen, 1872 ; p. 145, etc. 



t " Von einer eigentlichen Besiedelung des hohen seandinavischen Nordens oder dcs nordostlicheii Europas 

 iiberhaupt in jener Periode der Steinzeit, welche die Jlammuth-und Kennthierperiode oder die ' paliiolithische 

 Zeit' genannt wird, sind noeh keine Spuren nachgewiesen." Worsaae: Die Vorgeschichte des Nordens nach 

 gleichzeitigen Denkmalern; in's DeuUche ubertvagen von J. Mestvrf ; Hamburg, 1878; p. 17. 



