AN ERIE INDIAN VILLAGE AND BURIAL SITE 467 



a knowledge of what man is has an immensely- important bearing on 

 what man may be. The study of this story of man's development is 

 termed anthropology and may be properly divided into three divi- 

 sions, present anthropology which is ethnology, historic anthropology 

 which is history or ethnography and prehistoric anthropology which 

 is archeology. 



Archeology has definite ends in view far more important than the 

 mere aggregation and description of relics and specimens. What an 

 archeologist finds is never a relic only, although for convenience 

 sometimes termed so. His discoveries are specimens of certain 

 human artifacts illustrative of some stage of culture or of some local 

 development of that culture, and as such, are valuable primarily 

 for what may be learned from them. 



To those who are wont to rely upon the written records of history 

 it may not at first clearly appear how much may be learned from 

 such relics or how such things can have the import which the 

 archeologist claims. Let it first be realized that early man has left 

 upon the surface of the earth traces of himself by which his history 

 may be materialized far more accurately than it might ever have 

 been translated from a word-written document. We have become 

 so accustomed to rely upon the testimony of word-made records, 

 that we lose sight of the fact that words are but thought symbols, 

 idcapJioiics, and ideographs, and that written records may be erro- 

 neous and incomplete while material objects may convey clearer 

 meanings by which a much more accurate knowledge may be gained. 

 We seek to know the man of prehistoric times, yet that man has 

 left us few written documents by which we may read in words his 

 thoughts and learn of his activities. He has done better, and we 

 may know him notwithstanding. He has left pencilings upon the 

 surface of the earth which he trod which neither rains, nor floods, 

 nor the ravages of time have erased, save in spots, as a stray rain- 

 drop might expunge a letter from a slate and yet leave the word 

 still readable. For example, take the fire pit by which the ancient 

 warmed his body and in which he cooked his meat, into which he 

 cast the bones he could not eat and swept the refuse of his bower. 

 That fire pit remains to this day to tell the story of the man who 

 dug it. By the relics found within it, it tells us what he ate, what 

 he wore, what trinkets he had, the beasts he killed, the weapons he 

 used, how far advanced he was in the arts, how much and where he 

 commerced, what grains he cultivated, what implements he made of 

 stone and bone and shells and clay and of the fabrics he wove from 



