Page:Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.djvu/131

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CHRONOLOGICAL PROBLEMS AND LAND OSCILLATIONS
77

near the moraine, and it has been remarked that the raw material must have come from a considerable distance. Other stones were utilised as hammers, etc. Plaques of schist, blackened by fire, were supposed to have been used for cooking morsels of flesh.

A well-shaped needle made of oak wood and others of bone, also a whistle made of a foot-bone of the reindeer, were noted among the industrial remains. Horns of the reindeer sawn into pieces were used as implements and handles, among the former being harpoons and a perforated bâton de commandement without ornament. Pieces of a red substance were supposed to be used to paint the person.

All the relics were worn out and apparently thrown aside as being no longer usable, and the bones and skulls were broken for their marrow, from which it would appear that the establishment was conducted on economical principles.

The Schussenried station is important not only as representing the reindeer period in its purer form, but as an illustration of open-air habitation superimposed on the terminal moraine of the Rhine glacier. How far this glacier had retreated when the reindeer-hunters took up their abode on its morainic débris it is impossible to say. Although the climate was then of Arctic severity, there were no glaciers in the vicinity of Schussenried, and there being no caves to protect the hunters, they were forced to construct some kind of shelter. From the circumscribed area in which the relics were located it is not unreasonable to suggest that a timber house stood over the site, but of which there was no evidence on account of the complete decay of the wood. (The station is described in the Congres International, etc., for 1867 and 1869, by M. Albert Steudel and Dr Fraas, pp. 147 and 286; also in Archives de la Bibliotheque Universelle, 1867, p. 31.)

The Rock-shelter of Schweizersbild.

The Schweizersbild is situated in a small valley of the same name, about 2 miles north of Schaffhausen, and within 4 miles of the famous Kesslerloch Cave. The special features which induced man to take up his abode in this locality were due to the protection afforded by an isolated limestone rock which