FLINT IMPLEMENTS. These products of handiwork are interesting to the archaeologist, the technician, and the ethnologist. The word flint must be taken to mean siliceous stones that may be flaked and fashioned into implements. For the latter word students have substituted the term artifacts. Not only tools and weapons, but ornanments, art treasures, and objects used in cults and ceremonies were made of flint from Point Barrow to Fuegia in America, and every where in the Old World, excepting in places that do not furnish materials. In America also from the regions of cane and hardwood flint artifacts are absent. The sources of material were the open fields, boulder beds, and exposures of undis turbed rock. The savages camped near the larger supplies, and first with hammers knocked off coarse spills, then finer chips; finally, with pointed implements of bone, musing pressure, they acquired marvelous skill in flaking the refrac tory materials into the desired shape. Much of the last-named process, however, was done at their homes. These ancient workshops are among the most interesting of remains, since they re veal the steps in the earliest of human industries.
Flint artifacts of the implement class pierce, cut, and abrade. They were arrow, lance, spear and harpoon heads, and bits for drills; those of the edge class were knives and saws; the abraders were scrapers for the men and skin-dressers for the women. In those regions where calcareous flint, beautiful varieties of quartz, jaspers, carne lian, and obsidian abound, the :esthetic sense was awakened and stimulated. in public museums and private collections will be found tiny arrow heads perfectly made. and immense ceremonial spear-beads over a foot long, having their sur faces finished exquisitely. Flint artifacts have given the archeologist a deal of trouble. as well
as sat isfaet ion. Coming upon boulders from which spills have been struck, he concludes that he has found the tools of Paleolithie man, hut is later satisfied that they were the refuse of workshop or quarry belonging to later savages. Again, flue products and apparatus of industry ;:re eimmlative; the new never quite drives the old out of vogue. So, the occurrence of more primitive forms of flint implements at any point is no evidence of great antiquity. At the pres ent time this class of artifacts excites unusual interest. The history of prehistoric Europe is written chiefly in them; Egypt reveals an age of chipped flint antedating a:' the Pharaohs; front emus products of great beauty in this art; the occurrence of rude berms in western Europe, but snore especially in Quaternary deposits of America, is held to have thrown far back the life of man on the globe. The literature of the subject is vast and almost hopelessly scattered. Fortu nately, the Journal of My A nthrOpO/Dgio1// IP WC, of London; the _Bulletin de la socir't(' d'anthropologir, of Paris; the Zcitschrift fur Ethnologic, of Berlin; the Bureau of American Ethnology and the l'nited States :Museum in Washington have each issued a catalogue with up-to-date index of the subject. The America-It Anthropologist hits a bibliography in each MUD her. Besides these institutional works, consult: Mortillet, Lc pre historique ( Paris) ; Thomas, Introduction to the Study of Yorth American Archcrology (Cincinnati, 1898) ; and Fowke, Areha-oloqical History of Ohio (Columbus, Ohio, 1902). The older works of Evans, Baldwin, Short, are still useful. See A RCILEOLOGY, AMERICAN.