CHAPTER XV
ARCHÆOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION
In museums, the usual practice is to class as archæological specimens all objects not definitely associated with an historic tribe. The somewhat arbitrary nature of this grouping is obvious, but it is justifiable, for, in the main, these objects belong to an earlier time stratum than those that can be definitely assigned to living peoples. These specimens and their distributions constitute a large part of the data for one division of our subject and have been subjected to precisely the same kind of classification as have the culture traits of the historic tribes. Even a distribution map has been developed by Holmes,[1] but the one we give here was first used in 1912 as a hall label for the American Museum of Natural History. It differs somewhat from the Holmes map, though, in the main, the boundaries to the areas are the same.
NORTH AMERICA
1. The North Atlantic Area. This area includes all of New England and the Maritime Provinces of Canada with an indefinite inland border to the north and west, and south to the Delaware River. Its general archæological characteristics are: extensive shell deposits on the coast; the dead interred in a flexed position and usually without accompanying objects; the absence of mounds and similar earthworks; crude pottery, with pointed bottoms (Fig. 29) and rudely stamped decorations; the grooved ax and long cylindrical stone pestle; extensive steatite quarries and vessels of the same material; and, finally, great numbers of rock-shelters. A detailed view of the area, however, reveals at least two subdivisions: a southern including the territory from the Delaware River to the Maine-New Hampshire boundary; and a northern from that point onward to Newfoundland.[2]
