Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/311

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ANTHROPOLOGICAL WORK IN AMERICA.
297

our only lady Egyptologist. She may justly be compared in that held to Miss Edwards, of England. Her lectures on Egyptian subjects have made a sensation.

To the work of Dr. C. C. Abbott we briefly referred in connection with the Peabody Museum at Cambridge. Dr. Abbott lived for many years at Trenton, gathering a great collection of archaeological specimens from the State of New Jersey. The series, now at Cambridge, numbered many thousands of Garrick Mallery. specimens, and was the basis for The Stone Age in New Jersey and for the later book Primitive Industry. In 1875 Dr. Abbott found the first argillite palæolithic implements in the Trenton gravel. This gravel is said by geologists to date back to the close of the Glacial Period, and any evidence of human workmanship in undisturbed gravels of that kind carries the existence of man in the Eastern United States back to a considerable antiquity. A lively warfare has been waged against these "finds." It has been questioned whether the objects were of human workmanship, and whether they were really of the same age as the gravels. But similar implements have been found in similar deposits in other States within the glaciated area, and each new discovery tends to establish those which preceded it. Since his connection with the University Museum, Dr. Abbott has continued field-work in the Delaware Valley, and has lately made many interesting discoveries, such as workshops where argillite implements (non-palæolithic, but ancient) were made and quarries where the Indians gathered their materials for arrow-heads and spear-heads. Dr. Abbott aims to exhaust the archaeology of the Delaware Valley before he ends his work. Such thorough study of limited areas is what we most need in American archaeology. After such work has been done for each section of the United States, then, and then only, can our students reach sure conclusions.

The loan exhibition of religious objects above mentioned is mainly due to the energy and efforts of Mr. Stewart Culin, who