HOLMES 1 ABORIGINAL AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES PART I 227 



Mention should be made of the fact that the various forms of 

 chipped artifacts referred to above as associated with sites where 

 the raw material was obtained are by no means the only product of 

 the obsidian-working industry in Mexico. Vast numbers of articles 

 of use were produced by the processes of crumbling and abrading as 

 well as by chipping, and even elaborately carved jewelry, vases, and 

 idols were worked out with astonishing elaboration of detail and 

 refinement (if finish. 



The obsidian product was widely distributed froui the mining 

 centers, but in accounting for stray bits and occasional implements of 

 obsidian found in the Mississippi Valley it is not necessary to assume 

 that the ancient peoples visited distant parts or that it came by 

 trade from afar. It is quite reasonable to suppose that fragments 

 of this material may have been carried by flood and ice from the 

 great deposits in the Rocky Mountains of Montana, far down the 

 Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers, to be lodged in the banks and bars 

 of the rivers in what are now Dakota, INIinnesota, and even Illinois 

 and Missouri. 



The most remarkable instance known of the wide distribution from 

 the quarry source of obsidian artifacts is that of a deposit of knives 

 found in an Ohio mound. Hundreds of carefully chipped blades of 

 medium and large size, now preserved in the Field Museum of Natu- 

 ral History, were obtained from a burial mound in Ross County, 

 the nearest source of supply being the Yellowstone country, upward 

 of 1,500 miles away. It is, however, regarded as probable that 

 these implements, on account of their remarkable forms, were derived 

 from the mines of IMexico, still more distant, rather than from any 

 northern source. 



Mr. M. H. Saville, of the Museum of the American Indian (Heye 

 Foundation), on returning from his 1917 researches in Guatemala, 

 reports the occurrence of extensive quarries of obsidian along the 

 line of the Guatemala Railroad at La Joya, about 18 miles east of 

 Guatemala City. The road cuts through the obsidian deposits for a 

 distance of 2 or more miles and the roadbed is ballasted with obsidian. 

 The traces of ancient operations arc extensive but, as in the Mexican 

 quarries, the work was confined to the collection of raw material 

 and to the roughing out of cores and implements. Another quarry 

 is reported near Antigua. From this and fi'om the La Joya site, 

 the obsidian, extensively employed by the occupants of the ancient 

 centers of habitation about Guatemala City, was probably obtained. 



