HOLMES] DISTRIBUTION OF CACHES (9 



deposits of blades produced in the ([Uiiny-sliops or on sites furnishing 

 supplies of the raw material and transported and stored for utilization 

 or trade. Few caches of the quartzite blades have been reported from 

 the tidewater country. It is much more common to find deposits of 

 blades of other materials not obtained in the region, and therefore 

 brought from a distance by (juarry workers or traders. At the mouth 

 of South river, iMaryland, near the banks of Selby bay, four hoards 

 have been found, and are now for the most part in the collection of 

 Mr J. D. McGuire. Two are of argillite and one of jasper, brought, no 

 doubt, from workshops in Pennsylvania, some 150 miles away, and 

 one is of rhyolite, probably from the quarries on the head of Monocacy 

 creek, in Pennsylvania. A fifth cluster, consisting of eight line, long- 

 blades, was found in a garden near Baltimore, and is uow owned by 

 Colonel W. H. Love of that city. Five examples appear in plate 

 XXIX. Still another hoard, consisting of six long, slender blades of 

 slaty South mountain rhyolite, was obtained by Mr H. Newton Brewer, 

 from his farm on South river, Maryland. x\u illustration from this caclie 

 is given in a, i)late xxx. A cache of a dozen blades, found on a village- 

 site at Bades mill, below Chain bridge, is represented in h, plate xxx, 

 and a similar lot from an island in the Potomac, below Harpers Ferry, 

 is illustrated in c of tlie same plate. Nests of quartzite blades are 

 reported from different parts of the Potomac valley. One, consisting 

 of six pieces, all slightly specialized, was obtained from a village-site 

 in Anacostia by Mr W..II. Phillips (a and h, plate xxxi) ; a second {c, in 

 the same plate), owned by Mr Thomas Dowling, junior, contains four or 

 five blades, and is from Bennings; and a third, now in the National 

 Museum, is also from the vicinity of Washington. Others reported from 

 Potomac creek and elsewhere have been scattered by collectors who 

 did not appreciate their importance. We can not say in any case that 

 the quartzite blades found in caches had their origin in the Washington 

 quarries, for identical forms were produced on numberless sites through- 

 out the region yielding the raw nuiterial, but, in the nature of things, 

 the greater quarries would be more ft-equently represented in the caches 

 than tiie smaller. 



The quany-shop type of blade is not confined to the cache or to 

 cache finds. It is found widely distributed over the country on village- 

 sites, tishing stations, etc. These objects are plentiful on village-sites 

 in the region producing the raw material in plenty, and decrease rapidly 

 in numbers as we recede from that region. Thus a village-site on the 

 Anacostia j'ields hundreds of these blades, while a similar site on the 

 lower Potomac may not yield half a dozen. They are found in consid- 

 erable numbers in such places as the bluff village-sites about Mount 

 Vernon and the great shell fields of Popes creek, where beds of work- 

 able bowlders are convenient. The cache is not a uecessary lesult of 

 the quarry, but the quarry explains the cache. 



