The stone age in North America, vol. 1 of 2 — John Shaqi
The stone age in North America, vol. 1 of 2Moorehead, Warren K. (Warren King)
History
The stone age in North America, vol. 1 of 2
Moorehead, Warren K. (Warren King)
Indians of North America -- Antiquities; Stone age -- North America
FIG. 34. (S. about 2–3.) Scrapers and rejects from an ancient workshop
near Swarts, on the Rio Mimbres, New Mexico. Material, unknown.
There are ancient ruins near by. Phillips Academy collection.
(Clement L. Webster.)
]
Again, the turtlebacks and discs and the other materials may be in part
rejects, and yet may represent material blocked out for transportation.
I have always been a firm believer in the theory that, as most of the
flint was carried on the backs of Indians, or transported in canoes from
one point to another, the discs, turtlebacks, and other forms which had
been quickly blocked out by a few strokes of the stone hammer,
represented material to be transported to distant villages and there
refashioned. We may explain the quantity of such material on all these
quarry sites by means of a dozen different theories. The workers blocked
out more than they could transport; they were interrupted during the
course of their labors by the enemy; they were prevented from returning;
they found that the home villages were supplied with knives, and
arrow-points, and did not return to the quarries for another supply; and
so on. That much of the material of quarries is rejects and refuse no
one will deny, but that all of it is to be so classed I do not believe.
[Illustration:
FIG. 35. (S. 1–1.) Flake knife. Frank L. Grove, Delaware, Ohio.
]
There seems to be no evidence that Flint Ridge, Piney Branch, Little
River, the Indian Territory quarries, or other sites were worked in
historic times. On the contrary, one may believe that the quarries
developed through a long period of time. The very character of them
seems to indicate this. If America has been peopled for thousands of
years, I can see no reasons against the suggestion that the quarries
were discovered three or four thousand years ago, that a few Indians
visited them each season, or at intervals, and that quarrying ceased
about the year 1600. While this is my opinion merely, yet I have given
the subject a great deal of thought. If all the material in a certain
region came from a special quarry, no long period of time could be
assigned that quarry. But an inspection of village-sites, of local
collections, of museum collections, will teach the observer that not
only is there present material from the local quarry, but there is also
a considerable quantity of chipped implements of flint, or chert, or
quartz, or rhyolite, or jasper, or other stones which are not native to
the locality. Not one site, but many sites furnished material. It is
evident from the abundance of chipped material that river boulders, the
talus of bluffs, and drift pebbles furnish a great part of the chipped
implements of this country. If the Indian found a suitable pebble or
block of flint or fragment of stone, he most certainly would fashion
that into an implement rather than travel a considerable distance and
work laboriously to produce that which was found nearer home. Because of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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