ARTIFICIAL SHELL-DEPOSITS. 227 



great extent. It is from one to four feet deep, two hundred and fifty feet in 

 length, and extends back the same distance. In this deposit ashes seem to pre- 

 dominate, although in some places the shells are packed so closely that excavating 

 becomes difficult. The sand below the shells and ashes shows the effect of fire 

 very plainly. In a space ten feet square the writer found five bone perforators, 

 many notched sinkers, hammer-stones, sharpening-stones, broken celts, a few 

 arrow-points, quartz-drippings, nearly a peck of pottery fragments, a perforated 

 piece of a potstone vessel, and various other objects. Bones of birds and mam- 

 mals those of deer and bear predominating and fin-bones of fishes, were 

 scattered through the whole mass. Under all appeared a hearth of stones, show- 

 ing the effects of fire. 



" Triangular arrow-points of quartz are far more numerous in the various 

 shell-heaps than those of other forms or material. No human bones suggesting 

 cannibalism or sacrifices have been found. Many of these shell-heaps were 

 camping-places after the settlement of the island, as shown by the presence of 

 gun-flints, leaden bullets, brass buttons, brass arrow-points, glass beads, and 

 bottles, which are found from time to time in the upper layers." 



I was informed by Mr. J. Carson Brevoort, of Brooklyn, that shell-heaps 

 are numerous along Rockaway Beach, in the southeastern part of the island. 

 It does not seem that they have thus far been examined. 



Mr. E. Lewis, Jr., in an article on the Long Island coasts, speaks of " many 

 Indian shell-heaps, all of them now surrounded by meadows. Some of them, 

 six or more feet deep, near the margin of the ocean, are covered by every tide. 

 These are probably very old, and were formed originally at the uplands."* 

 As will presently appear, similar indications of a littoral subsidence have been 

 observed in New Jersey. 



New Jersey. The shell-heaps of New Jersey have been noticed by Drs. Gr. 

 H. Cook and C. C. Abbott, Mr. C. F. Wolley, and by myself. According to 

 Dr. Abbott, they occur along the greater part of the New Jersey coast, from 

 Cape May to Keyport.f My own investigations, made in the summers of 1863 

 and '64, relate to shell-deposits in the neighborhood of the last-named place, a 

 post-town situated in Monmouth County, on Raritan Bay, and noted for its trade 

 in oysters and other edible mollusks. In the following resume I avail myself 

 of an article contributed by me to the Smithsonian Report for 1864. 



There are several places in the vicinity of Keyport, and one even within the 

 precincts of the town, where the soil is covered with shells, among which Indian 

 relics occur ; but the principal shell-heap lies on Poole's farm, a mile and a half 



* Popular Science Monthly ; Vol. X, 1877 ; p. 436, note, 

 t Abbott : Primitive Industry ; p. 439. 



