DISCOVERIES AT A VILLAGE OF THE STONE AGE. 
9 
was made with a pointed instrument having a smooth round 
point, but that of all the pottery obtained from the higher 
levels was impressed with a tool having a square or angular 
point, — all seemed to point to a want of continuity in the arts 
and habits of the men of the older kitchen-midden, and those 
who made the shell-heaps and occupied the hut bottom of A; 
and it seems possible that the former belonged to a different 
tribe or race from the latter. 
I am the more confirmed in this impression that there was 
an older and independent occupation of this camping ground, 
from the discovery near the edge of the bank overlooking the 
sea beach, in and beneath the oldest kitchen-midden, of an 
ancient fire-place, so situated that it must have belonged to a 
hut whose foundation has been partly swept away by the sea; 
and which was therefore erected and occupied when the bank 
extended further out than it does now, and also further out 
than when the inhabitants of hut bottom A lived there. This 
older fire-place is marked on the plan as hut bottom No. 1. 
It was planted on a fresh layer of gravel apparently spread 
over the original land surface by a storm or by the surf when 
the land was lower than it is now, as the gravel fills up the 
inequalities between the stones which are scattered over the 
clay flat. There was but a film of vegetable mould between 
this gravel and the clay, from which it may be inferred that 
hut bottom No. 1 marks a very early occupation of the site. 
The clay upon which the layer of gravel was spread, is the 
Leda or Champlain clay of geologists (“N” in section of hut 
bottom), and it does not seem likely that a very long time 
elapsed, after this portion of the land was raised above the 
sea, before it was occupied by man. 
The foot-hold thus obtained at the sea-side by the dwellers 
of hut-bottom No. 1 seems to have been precarious, and when 
their successors came they placed their camps further back, 
and found a permanent site, safe from the encroachments of 
the sea. 
