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ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1909.

the horse; (3) first phalanges of the bison and other ruminants; (4) metacarpals and metatarsals of the horse and reindeer; (5) fragments of the shafts of long bones. In some cases the bone resembles a veritable miniature chopping block. In every instance it would offer a solid support for an object to be cut, scraped, or chipped, as the case might be.

Similar incisions could have been produced by pressing a flint chip or flake against a fresh bone at the proper angle to produce the marginal chipping so characteristic of the stone industry at the station in question, as has been noted by M. A. de Mortillet. Since Martin's discovery at La Quina, bones utilized in similar fashion have been found by Favraud at Petit-Puymoyen, and Pont-Neuf (Charente), also by Dr. Eugène Pittard at the Mousterian station of Rebières (Dordogne). Petit-Puymoyen is of Mousterian age, while Pont-Neuf is Aurignacian.

Smithsonian Report (1909), 0658.png 123456

Fig. 4.—Flint implements, from the Aurignacian horizon in the cavern of Los Cottés (Vienne). 1/2. After Breuil, Rev. de l'Ecole d'anthr. de Paris, Vol. 16, p. 56, 1906. R. de Rochebrune collection.

The rehabilitation of the Aurignacian epoch and the determination of its stratigraphic position between the Mousterian and Solutréan instead of between the Solutréan and Magdalenian, where it had been placed for a brief period by G. de Mortillet,[1] is one of the special recent contributions to the credit of cavern explorers, Cartailhac and Breuil suggesting that the old name be revived. Once and for a long period rejected by the builders it has suddenly become one of the chief corner stones in the temple of classification. Its


  1. Compte-rendu, Acad. des Sci., Paris, vol. 68, March ], 1869.