Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 22.djvu/179

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CULTURE PROBLEM IN OHIO ARCHAEOLOGY
167

instance of the finding of a grooved axe.[1] In the villages of the Fort Ancient culture, three grooved axes were taken from the Baum village,[2] and a few specimens were found at Fort Ancient.[3] The mound above referred to, aside from the presence of the grooved axe, presented other features indicating Algonquian origin. The few axes taken from the village sites easily may have been intrusive or pertinent to Algonquian occupancy or presence, rather than to that of their residents proper. The bell-shaped and the elongate pestles seem to be entirely absent from the villages of the Fort Ancient peoples, and the only instance recorded of the finding of this implement in the mounds of the Hopewell group is a single bell-shaped specimen taken from the Tremper mound in Scioto county.[4] Grooved hammers and bannerstones, in so far as the writer is informed, have not been found in Ohio mounds, outside the Iroquoian area, at least, although the problematical forms are reported as mound finds outside the state.

It may be said without fear of disproval that those areas of the state where mounds are less in evidence have produced proportionately as many surface specimens as have the regions where mounds are more abundant. However, the types of artifacts found in the first-named districts are mainly those generally recognized as belonging to the Algonquian family. It is true that these specific types are found also, and in considerable numbers, in the mound districts, in which case they apparently represent the presence of Algonquian tribes rather than the handiwork of the mound cultures proper. Their presence naturally tends to increase the number of specimens found on the surface in the mound districts.

The several distinct and highly specialized types of artifacts above mentioned are, as we have seen, so unusual in the mounds and sites of the two dominant mound-building cultures as to show that they cannot be attributed thereto, as types; yet they are objects of everyday occurrence in the cultivated fields over a great part of

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  1. Mills (1): p. 321.
  2. Mills (3): p. 42.
  3. Moorehead (1): p. 57.
  4. Mills (4): p. 234.