1891.] Archeology and Ethnology. 587 
ARCHEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY.! 
The International Congress of Anthropology and Pre- 
historic Archeology of Paris.—( Continued from page 503.) 
Fourth Question.—‘‘ The Chronologic Relations between the Civili- 
zations of the Ages of Stone, of Bronze, and of Iron.” 
Monsieur Judge Piette continued the discussion from the last ques- 
tion by continuing the description of his discoveries in the grotto of 
Mas d’Azil. The principal idea which he sought to elucidate in his 
dissertation was of an epoch of transition which should be intermediate 
between the cavern period, the Madalenien epoch, and the polished 
” stone age. Hedeclared that the human industry of the Madalenien 
epoch had not been uniform in its duration. In the Pyrenees there 
were four phases of this civilization, which might be grouped into two 
series, the first or earliest represented by the bones of the horse, and 
the later that represented by the bones of the deer. Thus, going from 
the bottom to the top there were four strata, the first that of the ox 
(Bos), the second that of the horse (Equus), the third that of the rein- 
- deer, and the fourth that of the common deer. In the last epoch the 
climate, which had been until then dry and cold, became warmer 
and humid. The reindeer became rare, and the art of the epoch fell 
into decadence. ‘This was the prelude to the age of polished stone. 
The evidence which he cited to prove these.conclusions was derived 
from his excavations in the Grotte Mas d’Azil. He described the fauna, 
the industrial implements in bone, the shells, and pieces of pottery, 
and insisted particularly upon the discovery which he had made of the 
pebbles which had been colored with the oxide of iron, ground and 
made into a paint, and applied with a brush. He also described the 
designs, some of which were in straight lines, parallel, cutting each 
other at right angles, chevron, fern, and curious and rare concentric 
circles with dots in the center. 
While many of the strata belong to the. age of the caverns, and 
_ were paleolithic, yet some of those on the surface were neolithic ; and 
- between the two, Judge Piette though he could identify a transition 
in the civilization, and he undertook to make two series of this tran-» 
sition, and to give to it, the first and lowest, the name of acesmolithic 
and to the top that of cémolithic, the one being the commencement 
and the other the completion of the art of polishing stone. This 
‘This PoE is edited by Dr. Thomas Wilson, Smithsonian Institution, Wash- 
=, DG 
