150 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [boll. 52 



ment of the same material used as a hammer, and a knife or scraper of 

 jasper. All were found in a surface layer of gravelly sand capping 

 the Monte Hermoso barranca, or on the broken face of the barranca 

 itself. The latter were picked up on the ledges of the bluff face, where 

 they had cascaded from above. The jasper knife or scraper is of a 

 type f amihar in the coast region as well as in Patagonia, as will be seen 

 by reference to figures 26, h, and 30. 



The quartzite pieces are from water-worn or weathered material, 

 such as was used for mullers, anvils, and hammers all along the coast, 

 and present the usual appearance of shop refuse so famihar to north- 

 ern archeologists — just such objects as may be found on numerous 

 sites in the Potomac Valley and of which countless numbers may be 

 seen distributed along the bluff slopes within the suburbs of Wash- 

 ington. The fact that one of the larger fragments has been used as 

 a chipping hammer is entirely in keeping with the writer's classifica- 

 tion of these objects as the refuse of implement making carried on by 

 recent tribes along the Monte Hermoso bluff. The inclusion of such 

 objects in superficial deposits which are subject to rearrangement by 

 the winds and by gravity is a perfectly normal and commonplace 

 occurrence. That they present any unusually primitive features of 

 form or workmanship or have had any significant association with 

 ancient geologic formations seems to the writer altogether improb- 

 able. 



Such differences as may arise between the writer's interpretations 

 and those of Doctor Ameghino are probably due in large measure to 

 the fact that the points of view assumed in approaching the problem 

 of culture and antiquity are widely at variance. Doctor Ameghino 

 takes for granted the presence in Argentine of peoples of great antiq- 

 uity and of extremely primitive forms of culture and so does not 

 hesitate to assign finds of objects displaying jjrimitive characteristics 

 to unidentified peoples and to great antiquity, or to assume their 

 manufacture by methods supposed to characterize the dawn of the 

 manual arts. To him all this is a simple and reasonable procedure. 

 ] The writer finds it more logical to begin with the known popula- 

 tions of the region whose culture is familiar to us and which furnishes 

 lithic artifacts ranging in form from the simplest fractured stone to 

 the well-made and polished implement, and prefers to interpret the 

 finds made, unless sufficient evidence is offered to the contrary, in 

 the illuminating light of known conditions and of well-ascertained 

 facts rather than to refer them to hypothetic races haled up from 

 the distant past. 



EARTHENWARE 



A small number of fragments of pottery were collected by Doctor 

 Hrdlicka on prehistoric sites along the margin of a lakelet near Puerto 



