THE ARCHEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF NEW YORK 45 



articles, and thus establish other tables defining culture traits. By 

 this means, also, we may find a convenient method of stating the 

 degree of rarity or frequency of any articles. Remembering that 

 we have analyzed 20,000 specimens of all kinds, we can easily 

 determine the percentage of the whole number or of the cultural 

 number. Thus, we find that to determine the cultural frequency 

 of hammerstones we divide the number by the total number of all 

 objects of the culture enumerated and obtain these percentages : 



Hammerstones 1 , ^ , , ^ 



1 11.4; / 12.27; M 6.21 



Culture frequenc 



When hammerstones as type objects are compared with all ham- 

 merstones we get another figure, that of type frequency ; in other 

 words we are able to say what percentage of hammerstones selected 

 from a large series gathered from representative sites of all cultures, 

 may be expected to be of any one culture. Compared with the 

 grand total we would then read : 



Hammerstones ^ , ^ . r at ^ i- r t- o^ 

 Class frequency \ '^ ^^-^ ' ^ ^'^-^ ■ '' ^'^'^ ' ^- ^^- ' ^ ' '^ 



There is considerable dift'erence between the general frequency of 

 a specimen and the cultural frequency and if such tables as these are 

 ever used care must be taken to mention the standard of comparison 

 whether general, cultural, specific site or class. Comparing our tables 

 we see that Iroquois hammerstones, for example, have a general fre- 

 quency of 5, a cultural frequency of 11.4 and in the site named a 

 speciiic frequency of 14.5, while the class frequency is 46.5. 



General f requeue}', therefore, may not be regarded as a guide to 

 specific frequency. As an example, the general frequency of ham- 

 merstones of the mound culture is .5 per cent. Compared with all 

 objects from a specific mound site in Xew York, the percentage 

 would probably rise to 6.25 or even more. 



To clarify our comparisons by percentages let us recapitulate our 

 hammerstone data. 



1 Out of 20,000 specimens of all kinds, 2150 are hammerstones. 

 Hammerstones therefore form 10.7 per cent of all articles found. 

 This is the type frequency. 



2 But these hammerstones came from various sites and we are able 

 to sort out A 1000, / 1000, M 100, E 10, U 40, which gives us the 

 means for determining the fraction of all specimens in our collection 

 that each culture takes. Our 1000 Algonkian hammerstones are one- 



