LA KE-DWELLINGS. 



41 





During the long occupation of the lacustrine villages many objects, no 

 doubt, fell accidentally into the water ; while large quantities of refuse, such as 

 the bones of the consumed animals and broken clay vessels, were intentionally 

 thrown over the platforms, and, as may be assumed, through the interstices of 

 the stems or planks forming them. These heterogeneous accumulations 

 became imbedded in the mud, forming what are now ages afterward 

 called the archaeological strata or relic-beds, upon which for many years the ~ 

 dredging-implements of antiquaries have operated, and brought to light the 

 evidences of a most curious, long-forgotten phase of human existence. In a 

 number of cases the bulk of these relic-beds has been increased by the ruin of the 

 villages themselves, some of which, there can be no doubt, were consumed by 

 fire. These conflagrations cannot have taken place in consequence of hostile 

 attacks, because human skeletons are exceedingly scarce in the pile-works, and 

 therefore must be ascribed to accidental ignitions, which were likely to befall 

 wooden straw-roofed huts, each of them provided with an open hearth, probably 

 blazing most of the time. When such calamities happened, many articles fell 

 into the water in a charred state, and were preserved to our days, owing to the 

 almost indestructible nature of carbonized substances. Several Swiss lakes have 

 much decreased in extent, and their ancient shores are fringed with formations 

 of peat, which now inclose in some instances the remains of lacustrine villages 

 formerly surrounded by water. Such is the case at Moosseedorf, near Berne; at 

 Wauwyl, in the Canton of Lucerne ; and at Robenhausen, on the Lake of 

 Pfaffikon, where the owner of the celebrated pile-work, Mr. Jacob Messikommer, 

 has been successfully engaged for years in extracting relics of the early lacustrine 

 period from moor-ground and peat. 



The builders of the early pile-works, it must be admitted, were an intelligent 

 and industrious people, who applied to the utmost the scanty means which their 

 primitive state of civilization offered them. They pursued hunting and fishing, 

 but devoted themselves also to agriculture and the raising of cattle ; they were 

 skillful workers in stone, horn, bone, and wood, practised the art of pottery to a 

 great extent, and produced very creditable tissues, employing a loom of simple 

 construction. The various occupations of the lake-men, and the fact of their 

 living in close communities, indicate no small degree of social order, which 

 necessitated submission to the decrees of chiefs or a majority of the people. 



They employed flint and jasper in the manufacture of arrow and spear-heads, 

 hardly distinguishable from those found in the United States, scrapers, saws, 

 and various cutting and piercing-tools. Some of the saws, mostly two or three 

 inches long, still retain their wooden handles, into which they were cemented 

 with asphaltum, a substance also employed for fastening arrow-heads in their 

 shafts. Quite frequent are the ground celts or wedge-shaped hatchets, made of 

 serpentine, gabbro, hornblende-rock, diorite, syenite, and other kinds of tough 



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