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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Fig. 4 (&). — Stone Digging Tools. 



sites there encountered, proved beyond a doubt that our excava- 

 tion had not caved in, but had been deliberately filled up by the 

 prehistoric quarryman, who, realizing the economy of keeping the 

 unworked ground free from excessive earth heaps, had evidently 



carried (in baskets or 

 skins) the newly dug 

 soil from the fresh 

 diggings to the ex- 

 hausted pits. 



Turning to the 

 surface refuse heaps, 

 and from the artifi- 

 cially flaked frag- 

 ments exhibiting no 

 succinct design that 

 strew the ground 

 everywhere, we find 

 (a) a series of well- 

 battered quartzite hammer stones, not pitted on their sides, and 

 varying from an inch and a quarter to five and six inches in di- 

 ameter ; (b) a mass of very interesting, artificially shaped blocks, 

 that all tend in the direction of an ideal leaf -shaped form, and 

 which in their various stages resemble the famous implements 

 or objects from Trenton and Ohio known as " turtlebacks " and 

 " palseoliths." 



Our attention is further called to the facts that there are few, 

 very few, arrowheads at these spots, and as yet no traces of pot- 

 tery, no banner stones, net sinkers, gorgets, or grooved axes ; that, 

 in a word, these remote places, buried in the forest inconveniently 

 far from water and arable land, were not fit for village sites. They 

 were quarries — nothing more, nothing less — whither the jasper- 

 using modern Indian, as known to Captain John Smith, Cam- 

 panius, and Kalm, resorted, must have resorted, to quarry his 

 material, knock it into portable shape, and carry it away to the 

 distant village. 



By a few blows of the pebble hammer the weathered surface of 

 the nodule (Fig. 7) is chipped away and the thick block takes a 

 pointed shape. A series of further blows, more careful and proba- 

 bly struck with the small hammers, produce a serrated cutting 

 edge around the whole fragment, which now, well marked with 

 the chipping that unmistakably proclaims the handiwork of man 

 (Fig. 5), though still rude, clumsy, and an inch or two thick in the 

 middle, has become the typical " turtleback " of Trenton. It may 

 be that a final series of flakings, whether due still to the hammer 

 or to pressure, results in a quite symmetrical blade, lightened to 

 the desired weight and ready for transport (Fig. 6). 



