Page:Anthropology.djvu/40

Rh stone, of grayish color streaked with white; a flinty formation occurring in all lead-bearing strata of Illinois, and identical with the cherty nodules and seams very common in the sub-carboniferous outcrops of the upper Mississippi and southwest Missouri. They had been buried new, showing no marks of having been used, and their peculiar style of workmanship and similarity of design leave but little doubt that they are the product of the same artisan. The exceptional one in the deposit is a well-proportioned and perfect spear point, nearly 3 inches in length, neatly chipped from opaque, milk-white flint, strongly contrasting in material, shape, and finish with the others, and evidently manufactured by some other hand, perhaps in a different and remote workshop.

Fourteen of the lot are of the laurel leaf or lanceolate pattern, pointed at one end and rounded at the other, with edges equally curved from base to point, averaging three-eighths of an inch in thickness in the middle and evenly chipped to a cutting edge all around.



They are uniform in shape, but differ in size; the smallest measuring 2¾ inches in length by 1¼ inch in width at the center; and the largest one is 6 inches long and nearly 2 inches wide. These fourteen are of a type quite common in all parts of the Mississippi Valley, and are supposed to have been used as knives or ordinary cutting tools. In our collection are six of these supposed knives, taken a few years ago from a deposit of over four hundred in West Virginia, and very similar in material, pattern, and dimensions to the fourteen now before me.



The remaining seventeen are shaped alike, but also differ in size as the first do, and are of the same average thickness. They too are sharp pointed at one end, but in outline from base to point their sides are