Page:The American Indian.djvu/302

248 relative scarcity of village sites and in the fact that when such sites are found they lack cache pits and are without defensive works, particularly east of the Penobscot. Shell-heaps are, on the contrary, large and numerous, containing a larger proportion of objects than those of the southern area, their numbers increasing as we go north and east. The same ratio holds for objects found in graves. Pottery, too, shows a change in form as we go eastward, the bottom rounded and



with outcurved lip, while stamped designs increase. The grooved ax, pestle, and problematical forms are replaced by the angular celt, gouge, and plummet. A somewhat divergent group of finds are those with the so-called "red-paint" burials, 4 confined to the lower Penobscot Valley. Here stone objects only (celts, gouges, adzes, and bayonet-shaped slate points) and masses of red ocher are found with certain burials.

In addition to these geographical segregations of artifacts, some advance has been made in the chronological analysis of the area. Thus, in the northern part, the objects found in shell-heaps seem to differ from those found in certain types of graves, particularly the "red-paint" burials just noted, suggesting that we have here the remains of at least two cultures, though their time relations remain in doubt. Likewise, the claim has been made that the rock-shelters of the south show some evidences of stratification in that the lower