hkdliCka] stone industries OF THE ARGENTINE COAST 109 



"The exhaustive examination which I made of the ground and 

 of the objects associated in certain cases with the worked pebbles 

 induces me to believe that these utilized or worked pebbles, gathered 

 in the Bonaerean Atlantic littoral, constitute only a local phase of a 

 certain portion of the tools of some of the neolithic native groups. 

 Moreover, I incline to consider them contemporary with the rude 

 implements and weapons of quartzite, shaped nearly always on only 

 one surface, which appear to characterize the larger part of the more 

 primitive neolithic stations, permanent or temporary. In my excur- 

 sions I have found them not only in the departments of Pueyrredon 

 and General Alvarado, but also on the coast of Necochea ^ and in 

 the proximity of Puerto Belgrano." ^ 



Outes has taken no notice of the anvil-stones. 



Response to Outes^s statements, hy Ameghino. — To Outes's notes, 

 cited above, Ameghino in his succeeding publication^ answered as 

 follows : 



"A young archeologist, well known for his malevolence as well as 

 for his obstinacy in defending the most impossible and paradoxical 

 things, published about this industry a memoir filled with all sorts of 

 inexactitudes. This young man had gone every year to Mar del 

 Plata, had walked over the same localities and trodden upon the 

 stones, without comprehending their significance. As soon, how- 

 ever, as my memoir appeared and with information obtained sur- 

 reptitiously from those who accompanied me on my excursions, he 

 went to Mar del Plata, gathered in the places that were indicated 

 to him a certain number of specimens and at once thereon, without 

 any serious examination of the question, declared that the case 

 was that of neolithic implements (!), representing a local phase. 



"Not possessing any geologic criterion, he mistook the Inter- 

 Ensenadean beds veneering the ancient cliff for a detritic deposit of 

 the present epoch; the Inter-Ensenadean marine strata, which 

 underlie all the Superior Pampean and contain shells of extinct spe- 

 cies, he considered recent accumulations on the way toward lapidi- 

 fication, whereas, on the contrary, they constitute an ancient forma- 

 tion on the way to destruction. The mammalian debris that are 

 found in the eolo-marine deposit he regarded as having been brought 

 out from the cliff against which this deposit is lying; but, as among 



1 " The specimens obtained in this locality were found at Punta Negra, on the surface of the continental 

 flat, and also in another spot situated approximately 500 m. from the mouth of the Rio Quequen, partly 

 covered by the movable sands of the dunes which there exist. In both cases, the worked pebbles were 

 mLxed with implements and weapons of the well-known recent industry to which I have referred in different 

 parts of this memoir." 



2 "I gathered many examples over the surface at the foot of the Colina Doble, distant a few hundred 

 meters from the military post; and I also found some isolated pieces in a salitral which exists on the road 

 that leads from the last-named locality to Bahia Blanca." 



3 Une nouvelle Industrie lithique. ly'Industrie de la pierre fendue dans le Tertiare de la region 

 littorale au sud de Mar del Plata, par Florentine Ameghino; in Analcs del Museo Nacional de Buenos Aires, 

 XX (sen ill, t. xiii), 1911, pp. 189-192. 



