HOLMES] ABORIGINAL AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES PART I 289 



Many kinds of implements were in their less highly specialized 



forms shaped by free-hand fracture without resort 



Implements Made to other metliods. Among these are knives, scrapers, 



choppers, hammers, hoes, and picks; and the process 



Avas extensively employed, as already noted, in roughing out the 



forms of many of the smaller articles finished by pecking, grinding, 



sawing, and drilling, among which are mortars, pestles, mullers, 



axes, celts, chisels, pipes, ornaments, and diversional and ceremonial 



objects, as well as sculptures and stones for building. 



The results of the writer's prolonged study of the shaping work 



as carried on by the ancient Potomac Valley tribes 



Shaping Work in aloiig the bowldcr-bcaring bluffs of Piney Branch, 



the I'otomac Val- -T-./^-n ,• "^ iii ' j- 



ley JD. C, Will serve to give a reasonably clear conception 



of the work of shaping by free-hand fracture, not 

 only where bowlders and pebbles were utilized but with all classes 

 and conditions of materials.^ Shai:)ing work in these quarries was al- 

 most exclusively fracture by free-hand percussion, the act being a 

 quick, firm stroke with a bowlder hammer, regulated in force by the 

 nature of the resistance to be overcome and by the result desired. 

 Few traces of other kinds of procedure were observed. The bold, 

 irregular style of the chipping precludes the idea that any process 

 capable of accurately adjusting the point of contact between the 

 tool used and the article shaped could have been employed, and 

 i-est fracture would hardly be adequate for the reason that in its 

 operation fracture is almost as liable to occur at the rest point as 

 at the point struck by the hammer. Again, it may be noted as 

 decisive in this matter, that neither on Piney Branch nor any of the 

 other great quarry shop sites are there adequate evidences of the 

 use of the rest process, which necessarily leaves large numbers of 

 anvil stones with surfaces scarred or pitted by the impact of the 

 stones worked. 



Referring to the Piney Branch quarry shops, it is observed that 

 the process of manufacture and the steps of form development appear 

 to have been about as follows: Grasping a bowlder in either hand, 

 the first moA^ement was to strike the periphery of the one, w^hich 

 served as the hammer, against the periphery of the other, which was 

 to be shaped, at the proper angle to detach a flake (figs. 144, 145, 146) ; 

 the second movement and the third were similar, and so on until the 

 circuit was completed. If no false strokes were made, and the 

 stone had the right fracture, these few blows, occupying but as 

 many seconds, gave as a result a typical " turtle- 

 The Tiiitieback back " — a bowldcr with one side faceted by arti- 

 ficial flaking, suggesting the back of the turtle; the 



1 Holmes, Fifteenth Ann. Bept. Bur. Amer, Ethn., p, 52. 



