Rough Stone Research Articles

Rough Stone Monuments in Western Europe

Professor Myres has helped his students and fellow-workers to see the bearing of one subject upon another, and to suggest social factors of archaeological sequences and links between archaeological data and distributions of human types. His is not a mind that is compartmented, it ranges vividly and rapidly over wide fields, and suggestive thoughts spring forth in quick succession, often to be accepted, always to stimulate further work. It therefore seems appropriate to offer here, as a tribute to him, a review of some aspects of the problems of the distribution of rough stone monuments, a subject which, sometimes half unconsciously, he has on occasion illuminated with flashes of intuition and acute criticisms that have helped to lift thought on the subject out of certain ruts into which it had been inclined to sink.

Turquoise deposits of Courtland, Arizona

Turquoise of gem quality occurs at Courtland, southeastern Cochise County, Arizona, in Upper Cambrian Bolsa quartzite and in granite of post-Cretaceous age. The turquoise has been deposited from solution in fracture zones caused by normal faulting prior to a period of thrust faulting. Its origin is genetically related to the granite. Limonite, kaolin, and sericite are associated minerals. Turquoise is found through a vertical range of 180 feet and is mined through shallow shafts, open cuts, and adits. The rough stone is sold to dealers and Indian traders.

Early Man in North America

DR. FRANK H. H. ROBERTS, JR., according to a communication issued by the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., has discovered in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, in northern Colorado, a habitation site and factory of ‘Folsom’ man. This discovery is of the greatest importance for American archaeology, as not only is it the oldest known habitation site in America, but it is also the first occasion upon which there has been any indication of the mode of life of the peoples by whom the ‘Folsom’ points were made, beyond the bare fact that they were hunting tribes of a high antiquity—a deduction from the association of these points with the bones of extinct bison, musk ox and mammoth, known to have pastured at the edge of the ice-sheet. The ‘Folsom’ points, it will be remembered, were first discovered five years ago at Folsom in New Mexico, and since then these finely-chipped flint implements have been found, frequently in association with extinct mammals, all over the United States from New Mexico to Virginia and Pennsylvania. It is thought by some authorities that they point to the existence of man in America several thousand years earlier than had previously been supposed. Dr. Roberts's discovery provides something of a cultural background for these scattered finds. The site he has now discovered rests upon a hard, chalk-like formation with about fifty feet of alluvial deposits above it. These must have been laid down very slowly. It is about a quarter of a mile in extent, but as yet only a small part has been excavated. The relics represent several camp sites occupied over a period of years. Flint nodules from which the implements were manufactured are plentiful. Thirty characteristic points and a great variety of scrapers, rough stone blades, drills, engraving tools and hammerstones, with a large number of broken animal bones, have been collected.

Research Items

Cultural Analysis in Western Europe. When Prof. H. J. Fleure touches upon a familiar topic in his occasional lectures, he may be trusted to approach it at a new, or at least unfamiliar, angle. The lectures which he has delivered at the John Rylands Library, Manchester, in the last three years afford apposite examples. The latest, recently published in the Bulletin of the Library, deals with the megalithic problem, and is, in his own words, an attempt to show “that the megaliths are not a matter of a vanished people and a forgotten civilisation; they belong to the core of our heritage as Western Europeans” (“Prehistoric Elements in our Heritage.” By Prof. H. J. Fleure. Pp. 36. Manchester: Manchester University Press, and John Rylands Library, 1934. 1s. 6d. net). He argues with an almost bewildering wealth of detail that the civic civilisation, which developed in early prehistoric times in the Near East, expanded by land and sea to form a series of archaeological provinces in distant lands, to which adventurers took something of the religious associations of a common life. In attacking the problem of the megalith, Prof. Fleure has taken the position that buildings, no longer the civic type of orderly shaped stone, but of rough stone, including the megaliths, appear in different regions and at different dates. In other words, it was the concept and not the form which was carried from province to province. These provinces, in which development took place along different lines and with varying stimuli, were none of them isolated; each linked up with others in more than one direction. Among the examples of the persistence of the influence of the megalith and the culture of which it was a manifestation down to Christian times and later, Prof. Fleure cites, inter alia, the occurrence of cults from early prehistoric times at places of entry such as that of St. lago in Galicia and Portugal and that of the saint of St. David's in South Wales.

Assam Megaliths

Assam is one of the very few remaining areas in which rude megalithic monuments are still erected and, like the most notable of the others—Madagascar—is on the fringe of the diffusion area of Indonesian civilization. Far apart as the two countries are, rough stone monuments are in both associated with a cult of the dead; both areas have cultural connexions with the Pacific. This paper, however, deals only with Assam, and its purpose is to give a brief account of the megalithic work existing there and thus to throw some light, perhaps, on the purposes and methods which may have been responsible for similar work in the prehistoric past of other countries.

§ IV.—The Rhyton Well

During the campaign of 1920 we sank a few trial pits within the acropolis walls to test the stratification and to try to find, if possible, earlier remains, after it had become clear to us that the buildings immediately round the Grave Circle were not earlier in date than Late Helladic III. Two such pits were made on the slope about fifty metres south-east of the top of the Ramp. Near by we noticed what was at first taken to be a rectangular pit enclosed by a rough stone wall measuring 1·00 by 1·00 m. and ·45 m. thick. The interior of this was cleared out, and then we found the walling was merely the coping (about 2·22 m. high at the point where it is best preserved) to a circular well-shaft about 1·15 m. in diameter, driven down through the hard limestone rock.As we excavated the well-shaft nothing worth noting, except some miscellaneous potsherds and the remains of a crushed leaden vessel, came to light till a depth of about six metres below the highest point of the coping, when some fragments of a funnel-shaped rhyton in Lapis Lacedaemonius (A, below) were found. From this down to a depth of 7·75 m. the other objects here described were recovered.

(1) The Annual of the British School at Athens (2) The Cochin Tribes and Castes (3) The Origin of Civilisation and the Primitive Condition of Man (4) Notes and Queries on Anthropology (5) Rough Stone Monuments and their Builders

(1) The Annual of the British School at Athens (2) The Cochin Tribes and Castes (3) The Origin of Civilisation and the Primitive Condition of Man (4) Notes and Queries on Anthropology (5) Rough Stone Monuments and their Builders

The Discovery of Stone Implements of Palæolithic Type in Veddah Caves

DRS. F. AND P. SARASIN recently made an expedition to Ceylon for the express purpose of investigating the caves now and in past times inhabited by the Veddahs, to see whether any stone implements could the discovered. Their earlier researches proved the Veddahs to belong to a lower and older type than the other inhabitants of Ceylon, and it is conceded that they must represent the few remnants of the aborigines who were met with by the Sinhalese on their first arrival, and by whom they were called Yakas, according to the tradition preserved in the Mahawansa. Presumably, these autochthones were at that time living in their Stone age; but no record of Veddah stone implements occurs in anthropological literature. From an article in the Ceylon Observer of April 22, written by these indefatigable travellers, we find that on this, their fourth, expedition into the Veddah country they were lucky enough to find a cave near the village of Nilgala, which until very recently was inhabited by Veddahs, the soil of which contained in great abundance stone implements of a very rough kind. Further investigations of some other caves, one near Kattragam, the other near Kalodai, led to an identical result. They also succeeded in discovering upon the hilltops of the country of Upper Uva the same rough stone implements in great quantities and still well preserved. Not only the autochthony of the Veddahs can be regarded as a proved fact, but also their former distribution over probably the whole island, including the low country as well as the mountainous districts.

THE WORSHIP OF STONES IN FRANCE

If archeologists who, for half a century, have with so much zeal drawn up the catalogue of megalithic monuments in France, who have described, measured, and even at times made drawings of them, had with the same care made inquiries concerning the views to which they have given rise among the country folk, we would be much better informed than we now are concerning this particular folklore. Some investigators have shown carelessness; others, after making certain inquiries which brought forth only obscure or evasive replies, have become discouraged; yet others, more persevering and skilful in obtaining the confidence of the peasants, have been more fortunate. But even to these latter everything has not been told. There are ceremonies of which the people do not willingly speak, either because of their sacred character, which should not be divulged, or because of the ridicule which might be made of them, by the inhabitants of the towns, concerning the traditional services of a strange and grotesque character which are not related to Christianity and which are remote from existing customs. This is probably the reason why it is that, in the center and south of France, or in the Ardiche and Aveyron, rough stone monuments are so numerous, yet have developed so few facts. Owing to the life led by the inhabitants and the relative isolation of this region, the old customs and ancient beliefs are better preserved than they are in those places which are more thickly populated and more open. Up to the present time the geographic distribution of observations made concerning the survival of the worship of stones 76

II.—On the Physical Changes Preceding the Deposition of the Cretaceous Strata in the South-West of England

Zone of Scaphites æqualis.—Beneath the Yellow Chalk of West Dorset and South Somerset occurs a very constant bed of yellow calcareous paste, with glauconitic grains, and containing at the base numerous small minute pebbles of quartz, the whole being so well cemented together as to be used at Pennys Toller, near Bea-minster, as a rough building stone. In 1865 I collected from this zone a large number of fossils, most of which I found to occur in the Cambridgeshire “ Chloritic marl,” Chardstock, Buckram, and Pennys Toller being perhaps the most fossiliferous localities. At the base occurs a well-marked horizon of Ammonites Rhothomagensis.