156 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF [lect. 



of the latter. In the above case Cook had with him an 

 abundance of metal, in exchange for which the islanders 

 supplied his vessels with great quantities of fresh meat, 

 vegetables, and other more questionable articles of 

 merchandize. The introduction of metal into Europe 

 was certainly far more gradual ; stone and metal were 

 long used side by side, and it would be unsafe to refer 

 every stone implement to the Stone Age. It would be 

 easy to quote numerous instances in which ' implements 

 have been, without any sufficient reason, referred to the 

 Stone Age, merely because they were formed of stone. 

 The two Stone Ages are characterized not merely by the 

 use of stone, but by the use of stone to the exclusion 

 of metal. I cannot therefore too strongly impress on 

 archaeologists that many stone implements belong to the 

 metallic period. Why, then, it will be asked, may they 

 not all have done so ? and this question I will now 

 endeavour to answer. 



5. The Danish shell-mounds are the refuse heaps of 

 the ancient inhabitants round whose dwellings the bones 

 and shells of the animals on which they fed gradually 

 accumulated. Like a modern dustheap, these shell- 

 mounds contain all kinds of household objects — some 

 purposely thrown away as useless, but some also acci- 

 dentally lost. These mounds have been examined with 

 great care by the Danish archaeologists, and especially 

 by Professor Steenstrup. Many thousand implements 

 of stone and bone have been obtained from them ; and 

 as, on the one hand, from the absence of extinct 

 animals, 1 and of implements belonging to the Palaeo^ 



1 The Reindeer also, which at an earlier period was common in 

 central Europe, is entirely absent. 



