11 
an angle. The pectoral spine of a catfish, illustrated in Plate I, figure 19, 
may have served this purpose; the larger end is rubbed off at a slant, 
possibly to facilitate its attachment to the shank. 
THE PREPARATION OF FOOD 
Artifacts which were probably used in preparing food consist of a 
stone pestle, a stone muller, stone mortars, and pottery. Certain other 
objects such as sharp chert chips, some of the projectile points chipped 
from stone, clam shells, pitted hammerstones, and awl-like tools, described 
in other sections, may also have been utilized for this purpose. 
HAMMERS FOR CRACKING NUTS AND BREAKING BONES 
Some of the pitted hammerstones, described under “Tools Used by 
Men”, no doubt sometimes served also as nut crackers, the pits in the sides 
probably resulting from continuous use. The hammers with peripheral 
abrasions were probably used to break up animal bones to get the marrow. 
PESTLES 
A fragment of a spatulate shale or sandstone pebble was possibly a 
small pestle for grinding or crushing seeds. 
MULLERS 
A fragment of small, smoothly worn gabbro boulder seems to have 
been used as a muller in grinding corn. Mullers occur abundantly at later 
Neutral sites in other parts of this country. 
MORTARS 
There are eleven fragments of what seem to have been small portable 
mortars, made of limestone, syenite, granite-gneiss, and hornblendite. 
Only one is perceptibly hollowed. Three, about an inch thick, seem to be 
parts of large flat slabs. One specimen is smooth on both sides. 
At some of the later Neutral sites in this county and in Waterloo 
county ' mortars were worked directly from the surface of suitably large 
stationary boulders, but here no boulders occurred. Possibly mortars 
made of wood were mostly used. 
STONES UPON WHICH FOOD WAS CRUSHED 
A slab of shale, about 4| by 5| inches in diameter and about If inches 
thick, has one of the sides scored and pitted, probably from use as an anvil 
for the cracking of nuts and bones. 
KNIVES 
Sharp chips of chert and some points for arrows chipped from chert, 
such as are illustrated in Plate I, figures 1 and 7, were perhaps used as 
knives in skinning animals and cutting up the meat. They could have 
