OTHER ANCIENT REMAINS.
Ancient mines are necessarily rare, being con fined to the limited deposits of native metals, quarries worked by the aborigines are numerous. These were excavated in search of a variety of stones—time slate and the catlinite for pipes, the flint or bornstone for arrow-heads, and the steatite or soapstone for bowls and vessels.
One of the most famous flint-quarries was at a locality now known as Flint Ridge, in the southern part of Licking county, Ohio. The ancient diggings are marked by pits two to six feet in depth, where the best veins of the mineral have been followed. The stone is not a true flint, but a species of hornstone. It flakes from a core in long symmetrical chips, and was admirably adapted to the manufacture of arrow- and lance-heads, knives, and similar instruments with a cutting edge or point. Hence it was widely esteemed, and must have been an article of traffic, for not only are weapons made of it found at a long distance from the locality, but blocks of the stone, rudely chipped out and of a size convenient for carrying, have been discovered four hundred miles distant from the Ridge. (See p. 3o.) Still more extended quarrying operations were carried on for soap stone. Some of the largest excavations are in California, where several tribes formerly resident in the southern portion of the State appear to have been ignorant of pottery, or at least to have given the preference to vessels of steatite. Vast numbers of these, weighing in the aggregate many tons, have been taken from ancient graves in the vicinity of Santa Barbara. In the East native quarries have been examined and described in the States of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, the District of Columbia, and North Carolina. Most of them are easily recognizable by the abundance of broken and incomplete dishes and the presence of worn-out or aban doned tools. At one quarry ten acres of land were thickly strewn with these evidences of an ancient industrial activity. The diggings or quarry holes arc rarely more than five or six feet in depth, and arc pretty sure to mark the spots where the largest and finest slabs of stone can be obtained.
hilpionents.—The quarry tools were generally composed of some hard and solid rock, such as basalt or syenite. They are of well-defined and various forms, and from their similarity in shape to implements now in use have received the names of mauls, axes, picks, and adzes. The mauls were evidently used in battering the rock, and are generally well worn at the ends. Many of the axes are double-ended, with the edges quite sharp, and were doubtless capable of doing good work. The picks are sharp pointed and quite heavy, designed apparently for dressing the stone lw pecking. The adzes appear to have been intended for cutting toward one, as the same instrument is with us, and some of them are so shaped that they were peculiarly adapted for cutting into the living rock and detaching masses of it without fissures.
Sepulchral Remains. —Among the most productive fields of archeo logical investigations are the sepulchral monuments of the earlier possessors of the soil. We have before remarked (p. 42) that during the Palaeolithic Period no methods of sepulture seem to have been in vogue. The senti ments which prompt to mortuary ceremonies were probably either not developed at all or not in a degree which would lead to the construction of any lasting monuments. In this regard neolithic man offers a sharp con trast to his predecessors. At no period in the life of the race has so much labor been devoted to perpetuating the memory of the deceased as in the early times of this later period. It would seem that the fatal fact of death then first impressed itself in its full force on the mind of man, and all labor scented light which would in sonic measure blunt its sting and win a victory from the grave. Therefore, the industry of whole tribes was expended in raising great stones like the menhirs and dolmens (N. 3. fig. 6), or huge mounds of earth, which should at once protect the remains of the departed and stand as a perpetual memorial of his name and deeds.