relief human head, and other objects of archæological interest. Many tablets have been unearthed and added to the former stores. For the future everything is full of promise. THE GERMAN EXPEDITION under Dr. Koldeway has made two important discoveries in the Kasr Mound of Babylon. The first is a stela of dolorite found in the east corner of the ruins. On one side is the image of a Hittite god. He is bearded, one foot in advance, both arms raised from the elbows-the left carrying a trident and the right a hammer-and a sword carved on the left side. He wears a Phrygian cap, the hair hangs in a long braid, the outer garment is decorated and extends to the knees, and the shoes are curved at the pointed toes. It has been suggested that this is the Hittite god of thunder, Tishub. On the other side of the stela is a Hittite inscription of six lines. Another stela found not far distant bears a relief-Ishtar and Hadad, and other images. Over the worshipping man are the words: "Image of Shamash-Shaknu, the man from the lands Shuchu and Maru." Between the worshipper and the image of Hadad are words that have been translated: "A measure of meal, one measure of wine I have appointed as a settled matter by this stone tablet; he who guards the palace shall enjoy these." An inscription of five columns rehearses what Shamash-Shaknu has done for his country to insure its security and prosperity. It contains, also, much new geographical material. The work is being prosecuted with great vigor by the German Expedition, and we await with confident expectation most important results. MOSAICS OF CHALCHUITE. BY WILLIAM P. BLAKE. In my paper* upon ancient mining for turquoise in Arizona reference was made to various pieces of mosaic work of turquoise of prehistoric origin. In further illustration of the estimate in which chalchuite was held for decoration and ornament by the ancient races of Arizona I am now able to present other examples. At Flagstaff, Coconino County, Arizona, recently, I found in the collection made by Mr. Love from the ruins of an ancient cliff dwelling on Oak Creek, fifteen miles from Jerome, Yarapai County, an ornament or relic encrusted with a wide border of chalchuite mosaic. The figure from the photograph represents the object at quarter size. It measures 35 inches long and 31 inches in width. It • THE AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN, Vol. XXI., No. 3, p 273, September-October, 1929. is composed of a central object made from a large clam shell, cut into the form of a cross, but with very wide and short arms. It has the general form of a Greek cross, and appears to be the object of chief value, the marginal decoration or border being the setting, like the frame of an enamel or gem of value. This cross is surrounded by a border of mosaic work in chalchuite, about three-fourths of an inch wide. The tesseræ are oblong and rectangular, and are about one-eighth to one-quarter of an inch in length. They are squarely cut or ground down so as to present sharp edges and angles. They are set or mounted in a pitch-like substance upon a back-ground, the nature of which was not exactly ascertained, owing to the fact that the whole. object has been mounted by the collector with cement upon a board, the better to preserve the specimen. The object and use of this relic is a matter of conjecture and surmise. A critical examination shows that the shell cross was SHELL CROSS WITH MOSAIC BORDER. fashioned out of one of the large marine shells, probably one of the massive pectens. The surface has been ground off and roughly polished, so as to nearly obliterate what appear to have been costæ or ribs in low relief. The inner angles of the cross are sharply cut, but the outer angles at the ends of the arms are smoothed off and rounded, as if worn away by long use, probably as a pendant worn upon the breast, and before the mosaic work was added. Additional evidence in support of this view is found in the fact that at the upper end of the shell and in the center there is a perforation, at exactly the point where one would be made to receive a string or cord by which the cross could be suspended. This perforation, which is now filled up by a carefully fitted pellet of the chalchuite, is oval in shape, not round as it would be left by a drill; but it is elongated upwards, precisely as it would become by the long continued wear of a cord. I am thus led to the conclusion that the shell cross, or central figure, whatever its origin or intention, was an object of veneration and high estimation as a relic. It was evidently worn for a long time, so that its outer angles became worn and rounded off. After years of use in this way, as an ornament or talisman, it was preserved as a relic and was ornamented by the border of mosaic of the precious and much-esteemed chalchuite. At the same time the hole at the top, by which the object had been so long suspended, was carefully filled up. If this shell cross is to be regarded as a Christian religious. emblem, or token, it, of course, shows that the object is posterior in date to the advent of the early fathers of the church, and also that the art of mosaic inlaying and ornamentation survived to modern times. This, however, we are led to expect and believe from the accounts given by the earliest explorers. According to Bourke* "the cross was found in full vogue as a religious emblem amongst the aborigines all over America." But the peculiar form of this cross is more closely allied to the mysterious symbol known as the Swastika, supposed by some to be a symbol of good-luck, a benediction, or blessing, and in use anterior to the introduction of Christianity, Interesting notes upon the Swastika may be found in the article upon terra-cotta antiquities by A. F. Beilin, from which it appears that the sym bol is found in the oldest oriental countries and that both American continents have produced it. The perforated terra-cotta spindle whorls of the land of the Incas were sometimes decorated with a cross of the Grecian form. In the Smithsonian Report for 1896 Mr. J. Walter Fewkes describes objects found in the Pueblo ruins and graves near Winslow, Arizona. One, a polished slab of lignite, was ornamented with five small turquoises, one at each corner and one in the center. The figure of this ornament, given on the plate facing page 534, shows a perforation at one end at the medial line, intended, no doubt, to receive a cord for suspension. Another object is a mosaic frog, of which a beautiful colored figure is given opposite page 529. This ornament was found upon the breast of a skeleton in the ruins at Chavez Pass. Mr. Fewkes states that wood, bone, and shell, incrusted with turquoise mosaic, were familiar objects to the inhabitants of the Chevlon, and that the women before marriage had ear-pendants made of rectangular fragments of lignite set with turquoise [chalchuite] bone incrusted with the same, or simple turquoise. It is also stated that the cross amongst the Cibolans (1540) was a sign of peace, and that it was received by the Indians at the time of Coronado's Expedition (1540) with deep veneration. • Rept Bureau of Ethnology VIIX p4%% +hur Aspen AN A AAN, Vol XX' _p_2" work, "The Swastika," the Smithsonian. Report for error ; Smithsonian Fourteenth Annual Report, p 11* In the reference to Dr. Thos. Wi'son's 15,4 is given as the source, but this is að ARCH.EOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES IN NORTH VIC TORIA COUNTY, ONTARIO, 1899, BY G. E. LAIDLAW. THE season just closed proved a very prosperous one in archæological matters, for this particular locality. The evidence of aboriginal occupation in new localities amounted to nine new sites being placed on record, and a large quantity of artifracts being secured, numbering in all, exclusive of pottery fragments, some three hundred specimens. This material has a direct tendency to show that the primitive population was a peaceful one of sedentary habits, which is further borne out by other characteristics disclosed in examining the sites. The artifracts recovered seem to pertain to the home life and domestic economy of such a people, and exhibit an extreme paucity of those weapons or implements that are generally supposed to be used by a warlike or hunter people. This fact, coupled with the finding of numbers of mealing stones on the places of occupation, and quantities of carbonized corn in the ash beds, gives evidence that this cereal furnished a large portion of their food, helped out by such food products as the forest produced, in the shape of wild fruit,* game and nuts, though this is not an essentially nut-bearing district, and the game was probably scarce on account of the density of the population, together with quantities of fish easily obtainable. from the different magnificent systems of lakes and rivers that the country abounds in; the varieties of fish being mascalonge, bass, salmon, trout, pickerel, whitefish, and the smaller sorts, as trout, herring, perch, suckers, eels, catfish, etc.; all within. reach of a day or two's journey. These newly recorded sites possess the same characteristics of formerly recorded ones, with the exception of an embankment at one site, and consisted of various numbers of various sized ash-beds situated near to perennial springs, in the immediate neighborhood of soil suitable for their primitive operations in agriculture, generally a light sandy loam. Several of these sites had graveyards quite close by, some of which being opened disclosed a few human bones at a depth of about two feet. The graves had largely been filled up with surface stones, and may have been opened subsequently to burial for This section is noted for large quantities of wild fruits, acres of huckleberries and cranbernes, groves of wild plums and cherries, besides abundance of blackberries, goosebernes, thimbleberries, raspberries, etc., abound. + Parkman mentions the scarcity of game in the Huron country, owing to the density of population the removal of remains to some other place for tribal burial, as the bones remaining in these single graves were few in number, generally the smaller bones, and did not seem old enough to warrant one believing that the missing ones had decayed from lapse of time. Almost all of these sites have been subsequently grown over with a heavy growth of pine, standing on ash-beds, graves and câche pits. This growth has been removed in the last forty or fifty years; some of the remaining stumps have a diameter up to five feet; others average from three and one-half to four and one-half feet. The five-foot trees, with an average of sixteen annual rings or cortical layers to the inch, which is the smallest of a series of averages of pine grown in this section, twenty-two inches being the largest, would show an age of four hundred and eighty years, or thereabouts; three hundred and eighty-five for a four-foot tree, and three hundred and thirty-six for a three and one-half foot; twenty-five to fifty years must be added to give their approximate age, and as it is two hundred and eighty-five years since Champlain passed through this region, and mentioning nothing of these towns, it is reasonable to suppose that they were abandoned or destroyed by enemies (Iroquois) before his advent. The only one attempt at embankment in thirty examined. sites in an area of twenty by twenty-five miles, precludes any idea of defensive arrangement, and indeed these places are so straggly, and in several cases immediately commanded by high hills, that there would be hardly any use in endeavoring to protect them with palisades, the construction of which would cost an immense amount of labor with primitive methods. Palisading does not seem to have developed much until the Hurons were driven to the northern portion of their peninsula (Simcoe county) by the Iroquois, where they were found by the French occupying and building close, compact palisaded towns; the labor being lessened by the people being more concentrated and possessing European axes. The herein mentioned sites, show a great affinity to the Huron towns west of Lake Simcoe, both in the shape of some of the ash-beds suggesting "long houses" and in the proportion of similarity of relics contained therein; but lacking the ossuary style of burial, which may have been more fully developed where the Hurons made their last stand. The absence of ossuaries and palisaded villages, and the occurrence of single graveyards with extensive sites, are particularly noted along this portion of the Huron "drift," till they come to and round the southern end of Lake Simcoe, when gradually the single graves give place to ossuaries, and the loose, straggling villages to the close, compact, densely occupied towns in the northern part of the peninsula, which were occupied when the French came in contact with them. This fact is borne out by the gradual appearance of European articles in the sites in the northern portion of the county of York, and increasing greatly |