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Show r ! 78 BASIS OF AMERICAN HISTORY was also mined by the aboriginal Americans, and the signs of their work are quite common in the Lake Superior copper district. The method was apparently simply to batter away the surrounding rock from the native metal with stone hammers. 1 The investigation of these quarries and quarry workshops not only throws light on the methods of manufacture, but reveals the fact that many of the more roughly chipped specimens formerly regarded as crude implements and possible indications of palaeolithic man may be nothing more than rejects or imperfect or only partly finished implements. As the rocks found in different localities often show marked variation, a careful study of the distribution of the different artifacts might throw much light on the early lines of travel and intercommunication. -. Perhaps as important a class of remains as any other are the burial- mounds, graves, and cemeteries, for these yield not only skeletons but also the greater portion of the movable remains- the vessels, implements, and ornaments, which reveal at least something of the art and culture of the former inhabitants of the different regions. ^ The shell mounds of the southern states have also been 1 Whittlesey, Ancient Mining on the Shores of Lake Superior ( Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, XIII., No. 155); Packard, " Pre- Columbian Copper Mining in North America " ( Smithsonian Institution, Report, 1892, pp. 175- 198); Holmes, " Aboriginal Copper Mines of Isle Royale " { American Anthropologist, N. S., III., 684- 696). |