FOWKE] ABORIGINAL FLINT QUARRIES 539 
of people who moved frequently. With the exception of the one 
group at the quarries none of them is near any known bed of work- 
able chert. 
Fuint 1x Barron Country, Mo. 
In the southeastern part of Barton County, Mo., is an irregular 
knoll embracing an area of several square miles. The highest points 
of its somewhat uneven surface are elevated 50 to 60 feet above the 
surrounding country. Its existence is due to a thick stratum of chert 
which withstood the erosive action that lowered the region around it. 
In this hill, on secs. 9 and 16, T. 31, R. 29 W. of the fifth principal 
meridian, a mile north and 2 miles west of Golden City, is an aborig- 
ina] quarry. The excavated area, nowhere more than 100 feet in 
width, extends as a series of shallow pits and trenches for about 500 
feet along the foot of a gentle slope that terminates at a shallow 
depression reaching in a southward direction; thus comprising about 
an acre of stone, very little of which remains undisturbed. 
The digging begins at the outcrop of a thin, compact stratum and 
extends inward, or toward the top of the hill, until the thickness of 
the overlying earth became too great for the energy or the patience 
of the laborers. The average height of the face along the devious 
line at which they suspended their work is about 6 feet; apparently 
not much of an obstacle, but the material is about equal parts of 
chert fragments and tough clay. The pits and trenches are now 
from 2 to 5 feet deep to the trash which has accumulated in them; in 
other words, they have filled in about a foot since they were aban- 
doned. ‘The surface is so overgrown with weeds and brush that the 
earth is visible at only a few places; but in these bare spots may be 
seen numerous blocks and spalls due to testing the fragments quarried. 
Most of these, as well as the pieces scattered on the surface, are 
coarse, rough, or cellular, containing many crevices and inclusions, 
and consequently not adapted to the needs of flint workers; but 
among them are many flakes and chips of smooth, fine-grained stone, 
uniform in composition, some of them having much the appearance of 
chalcedony or crystalline novaculite. The last is, no doubt, the 
material for which the excavations were made. Such stone, when it 
occurs with other chert is usually at the bottom of the deposit. 
Either there was not much of it at this site, or else the labor of pro- 
curing it was considered to be too great, for similar excavations in 
other localities in Missouri far surpass these in extent and magnitude. 
While many thousands of flint implements have been gathered up 
in this vicinity, that is to say within a few miles, nearly all of them 
are of rather coarse stone not susceptible of fine chipping. Their 
color is usually the grayish or dirty white hue characteristic of nearly 
all the chert in the Ozark country. The character of the completed 
