Loornis and Young — Shell Heaps of Maine. 23 



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Considering the age of the heaps, it must be concluded that 

 the level at which the camp was originally established was 

 some ten or more feet above the present level, and therefore 

 many of the heaps now on islands, especially where these are 

 near the shore, were then on the mainland. 



Turning to the contents of the heaps, we may expect to learn 

 from the contained articles many characteristics of the Indians 

 who made the heaps. From the refuse bones, their food, and 

 their hunting and fishing ability will appear ; from the tools, 

 their grade of culture, and something about their mechanical 

 ability will also appear, while from comparisons with like 

 rejects of other tribes, we shall learn something about their 

 relationships. 



The accompanying table gives all the sorts of food animals 

 which we found and identified from the heaps. Some may not 

 prove to have been food, but most were. Besides these there 

 were a few species of molluscs, which occurred only once or 

 twice, and were, therefore, simply accidental. 



Deer (Odocoileus virginianus borealis (Miller) Allen) occur 

 on Sawyer's Island in vast numbers, indicating that in this camp 

 deer meat was a staple food supply. In other localities, their 

 remains were comparatively infrequent, though always present. 

 They were doubtless a highly prized food, and the remaining 

 fragments of bones offer mute testimony to the Indian's 

 pleasure in this meat, in the way every limb bone is split and 

 crushed to get out the marrow, even such small bones as those 

 of the toes being broken open, that none of the marrow should 

 escape. Then the cannon bones, on account of their hardness, 

 are a favorite material for making tools, likewise the antlers, 

 when found. "We found, however, no indication of the lower 

 jaw being used for a tool, as was the case among the Indians of 

 the Baum Village Site.* There were 53 crania preserved, of 

 which 52 belonged to males, and only one to a female. Mills 

 concludes, from a similar state of affairs in the Baum Village 

 Site, that the Indians showed a foresight for perpetuating the 

 deer in advance of that now exercised by man generally (loc. 

 cit., p. 27). However, from studying the small fragments of 

 other crania, we feel that the explanation is to be sought in 

 another direction. The crania were always broken open to 

 get out the brain. In the case of males with the heavy 

 frontals, strengthened to support the antlers, the smashing of 

 the brain case was done in the parietal region, the thickened 

 frontals remaining intact : while in the case of females, the 

 frontal bones being thin, the cranium was broken through this 

 region, or they were at least also broken in getting the brain 



* Ohio Arch, and Hist. Soc. Quart., vol. xv, p. 79, 1906. 



