File:The American Museum journal (c1900-(1918)) (17539728073).jpg

Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo14amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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162 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL fancy. There is besides a large and splendid series of grooved axes, including some fine examples of the ridged grooved axe, found most abundantly in that region. Several excellent celts of pe- culiar form are included, some with triangular longitudinal sections, others with circular cross sections. Some ex- amples have flaring bitts, a not common form. Perhaps the most interesting single specimen is an axe with its handle, worked from a single piece of stone. Such axes are rare in North America, but have occasionally been found, espe- cially in the Southeast; while a related form occurs on the northwest coast, about Puget Sound particularly. A single specimen from within fifty miles of New York City is known to the writer. It is in the hands of a private collector. This type of axe is found in northern South America and in the West Indies (the Museum has a specimen from Caicos Island in the Bahamas), and forms a connecting link between the archfeology of southeastern North Amer- ica and northern South America. A beautiful example of the problem- atic polished stone implement called a "spud" is also a much to be desired ad- dition. Another equally fine object of this class, from Kentucky, is in the old Douglass collection. Discoidals, called "chungke" stones from their supposed use in an Indian game of that name, are well represented in the Mason col- lection, and bell-shaped and straight pestles and grooved and pitted hammer stones are present galore. There are too few bone and antler implements, only a few awls and needles being present, but pottery is represented by quite a number of pieces, mostly from graves. These are nearly all plain, and resemble the ware of the lower Mississippi region more than that of the southern Atlantic coast. No painted examples are found. Several vessels
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Ornaments of carved steatite. Three of these represent mmiature grooved axes from graves have holes knocked in their bottoms, presumably in conformity with the Indian custom in that region of "killing" all objects placed with the dead, so that the spirit of the utensil may accompany the soul of the deceased on its long journey to the other world.

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