OHIO HISTORY CONFERENCE:
PROCEEDINGS 101
for the purpose of recapturing the lost
arts of prehistoric man in the
utilization of flint and other lithic
materials, and for the establishment of
a laboratory of actual materials to be
used for purposes of comparison.
This project, it will be recalled, was
financed by Messrs. Arthur C.
Johnson and H. Preston Wolfe, pending
other sources of support. The
Director had hoped that the Lithic
Laboratory might become a permanent
activity of the Museum, through State
appropriation. However, because
of a tendency to economize on the part
of the present administration, there
is no prospect for the present of funds
from this quarter. In the mean-
time, our original sponsors continue to
finance the Laboratory, in the hope
that funds may be forthcoming from some
other source.
The accomplishments of the Lithic
Laboratory for the fifteen months
of its existence are entirely
satisfactory. The uninitiated can have little
conception of the vast amount of detail,
mostly unspectacular, which has
attended the undertaking, before the
ultimate objectives can be realized.
Up to date an exhaustive world-wide
bibliography has been compiled, a
library has been inaugurated, samples of
lithic materials have been secured
from several states and from France and
England, and a large amount of
basic experimentation has been carried
through.
In a paper entitled "Some
Unfinished Business in Cultural Anthro-
pology" read before the Ohio Valley
Sociological Society, Dr. John P.
Gillin, noted anthropologist and writer,
has this to say regarding the project:
"Part of the unfinished business in
archaeology is to advance scien-
tific interpretation of results so that
other scholars may grasp the human,
cultural problems so far as possible of
the societies whose remains are
excavated. One significant attempt along
this line is being made by the
Lithic Laboratory for the Eastern United
States at the Ohio State Mu-
seum.... [Director] Shetrone and his
associates have set out to investigate
thoroughly the muscular skills involved
in manufacture, sources of supply,
uses and distribution of stone implements.
When they have carried their
program through we should have for the
first time a clear appreciation of
the lithic industries which have engaged
the major part of man's industrial
activity during ninety-nine per cent of
his existence upon the earth. The
Lithic Laboratory operates on the theory
that stone artifacts are not merely
given data in themselves, but that each
artifact represents a human and
cultural problem which some individual,
conditioned by his group culture,
solved."
H. C. SHETRONE, Director.
List of Accessions
Accessions to the archaeological and
historical collections of the Society
herewith listed, have been acknowledged
and recorded, and placed on exhibi-
tion or stored, as seemed most
desirable. All are gifts unless otherwise
noted.