Antiques & Vintage Collectibles

In January of 1938, the Lithic Laboratory for the Eastern United States was founded at the Ohio Archaeology and Historical Society, now the Ohio Historical Society. An article in Museum Echoes, the Society's newsletter, of the same month proclaimed its purpose: “to study the lithic materials (stone, flint, etc.) pertinent to the material culture of the American aborigines, and of methods and techniques employed in their utilization.” The article went on to explain that the reason for embarking on this initiative was simply that such a study had  “been sadly neglected” by the field of archaeology prior and that finally undertaking it would help “throw light on the origin, relationships, migrations and trade routes of the ‘first Americans.’” An understanding of these “methods and techniques” and thereby the peoples that employed them was to be achieved by experimentation with flintknapping. While the basics of stone artifact production were known at the time, “the more refined techniques… continue to defy present-day skill.”

"The future naval officers, who live within these walls, will find in the career of the man whose life we this day celebrate, not merely a subject for admiration and respect, but an object lesson to be taken into their innermost hearts. . . . Every officer . . . should feel in each fiber of his being an eager desire to emulate the energy, the professional capacity, the indomitable determination and dauntless scorn of death which marked John Paul Jones above all his fellows.”