HOLMES ANNIVERSARY VOLUME 



It was the belief of this school that one could not describe an 

 artifact with clearness until he knew how it was made. Mason carried 

 out the idea consistently in the monumental works that he produced 

 on aboriginal industries. The writer remembers with gratitude that 

 Professor Mason urged him to become familiar to the last degree with 

 the methods of fire-making before undertaking in 1888 the publica- 

 tion of descriptions of fire-making apparatus in the United States 

 National Museum. "Knowledge at first hand" was his maxim, and 

 those who profited by his instruction bear witness to its value. It 

 was a privilege beyond estimation to have been connected with the 

 older school of American aboriginal technic, of which Holmes was 

 preeminent, and to have shared in its labors. Some years ago an 

 attempt was made to correlate the so-called paleoliths of European 

 archeology with specimens of almost indentical forms found in Amer- 

 ica. The matter provoked considerable discussion and was apparently 

 about to divide American archeologists into two camps when Holmes 

 definitely cleared the air by demonstrating that these objects were 

 rejects or wastage of the process of making arrowheads and leaf-shape 

 knives. 



This epochal generalization grew out of a study of the work- 

 shop materials in a quartzite bowlder deposit on Piney branch, 

 within the limits of the city of Washington. Here De Lancey Gill 

 discovered, about 1880, traces of chipped stone on the banks of the 

 stream. Later, in 1889, Professor Holmes explored the neighborhood 

 of the spot and found a quarry workshop of great extent containing 

 a tremendous quantity of rejectage. In this mass appeared innumer- 

 able "paleoliths". By examination and experiment Holmes found 

 that these anomalous objects represented the first steps pursued by 

 the aborigines of the District of Columbia in reducing quartzite 

 bowlders to the thin leaf-shape blades desired for fashioning into 

 knives and arrowheads by subsequent chipping or shaping at leisure 

 at their villages. Holmes further demonstrated that the stone-worker 

 held a bowlder in the left hand and struck off flakes around the periph- 

 ery by means of another bowlder held in the right hand. If the stone 

 fractured evenly, clearing the side of superfluous material and leaving 

 none of the original worn surface of the bowlder, the stone was 

 turned and the process repeated, the result being a leaf-shape blank 

 ready for further fashioning. A study of the considerable rejectage 

 due to accident in working or lack of quality in the stone brought 

 to light specimens illustrating most fully all the steps from the natural 

 bowlder to the terminal blade broken perhaps at the last by an un- 

 lucky blow. Following the lead of the quarry work, Holmes traced 



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