Page:The Journal of geology (IA journalofgeology11893univ).pdf/28
occurrence or non-occurrence of rudely flaked stones or of any artificial objects whatsoever in the normal gravels of the Delaware Valley, and it therefore becomes necessary to examine somewhat critically such of the published evidence as seems to be seriously affected by these recent observations.
It may be stated in beginning that no one disputes the glacial age of the Trenton gravels. The question to be discussed is simply this,—is the evidence satisfactory that works of art have been found in these gravels? Nothing else need be asked or answered. I do not take up this subject because I love controversy; disputation is really most distasteful to me. It happens that under the Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution I have been assigned to the work of making a survey of the archeology of the Atlantic coast region in which large areas, especially in states south of Mason and Dixon's line, remained almost untouched by investigators, and two years have been consumed mainly in these southern areas. But there are questions that refuse to be confined to definite geographic limits, and evidence secured in one section is sometimes found to bear so directly and forcibly upon problems pertaining primarily to other sections that the student of these problems must perforce become a free lance, and unhesitatingly enter any province promising results of value, howsoever fully occupied it may be by other investigators. One of the most interesting and important questions growing out of the study of American archeology has, as we have seen, arisen in the Delaware Valley, and the turn taken by some of my work in the south and west is such that I cannot pass this question by without consideration. The necessity of taking up the subject of glacial man became more and more apparent as the years passed on, and people continued to say to me, "You must go to Trenton; we are not satisfied with the present status of the question there; the evidence arrayed in favor of the theory of a paleolithic gravel man needs critical examination."
The difficulty of taking up and re-examining evidence, of which the record only remains, is, however, very great, since in