Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895: Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1895-1896, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1898, pages 519-744Fewkes, Jesse Walter
History
Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895: Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1895-1896, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1898, pages 519-744
There was no evidence that the former inhabitants of these buildings
were acquainted with metals. The ends of the beams had been hacked off
evidently with blunt stone axes, aided by fire, and the lintels of the
houses were of split logs which showed no evidence that any metal
implement was used in fashioning them. We found, however, several
stone tools, which exhibit considerable skill in the art of stone
working. These include a single ax, blunt at one end, sharpened at the
other, and girt by a single groove. The variety of stone from which
the ax was made does not occur in the immediate vicinity of the ruin.
There were one or two stone hammers, grooved for hafting, like the ax.
A third stone maul, being grooveless, was evidently a hand tool for
breaking other stones or for grinding pigments.
[Illustration: FIG. 251--Stone implement from Honanki]
Perhaps the most interesting stone implement which was found was
uncovered in the excavation of one of the middle rooms of the western
part of the ruin, about three feet below the surface. It consists of a
wooden handle rounded at each end and slightly curved, with a
sharpened stone inserted midway of its length and cemented to the wood
with pitch or asphaltum. The stone of this implement would hardly bear
rough usage, or sustain, without fracture, a heavy blow. The edge is
tolerably sharp, and it therefore may have been used in skinning
animals. Judging from the form of the handle, the implement is better
suited for use as a scraper than for any other purpose which has
occurred to me (figure 251).
The inhabitants of the two ruins of the Red-rocks used obsidian
arrowpoints with shafts of reeds, and evidently highly regarded
fragments of the former material for knives, spearheads, and one or
two other purposes.
The stone metates from these ruins are in no respect characteristic,
and several fine specimens were found in place on the floors of the
rooms. One of these was a well-worn specimen of lava, which must have
been brought from a considerable distance, since none of that
material occurs in the neighborhood. The existence of these grinding
stones implies the use of maize as food, and this evidence was much
strengthened by the finding of corncobs, kernels of corn, and charred
fragments at several points below the surface of the débris in the
chambers of Honanki. One of these grinding stones was found set in the
floor of one of the rooms in the same way that similar metates may be
seen in Walpi today.
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