University of Virginia Library

OBJECTS OF STONE

Unlike bone, wood, and fibrous materials, stone persists. Hence
the preponderance of stone artifacts in almost every collection from
a Pueblo ruin. There are milling stones, or metates, stone axes, rubbing
or smoothing stones, abraders, tablets of unknown function, and
a greater or lesser assortment of miscellaneous objects.

Hammerstones were the tools with which other stone tools were
made. Endlessly repeated blows of stone upon stone gradually wore
away the unwanted portions. Any stone that could be held in the
hand was a potential hammer, but hard, tough rocks were preferred.
As its cutting edge became dulled through use, a hammer was lightly

discarded. Second only to bone awls, hammerstones are the most
numerous of ancient Pueblo artifacts. Our excavation notes record
the finding of 125 but there were others we did not trouble to report.
Some had been quartzite or diorite cobblestones; others, chunks of
flint or silicified wood. Of 11 hammers recovered in Room 43 all
but 1 were of gray silicified wood from the "Bad Lands" of Escavada
Wash, a northern tributary of Chaco Canyon.

Metates and manos.—Of 44 metates and metate fragments unearthed
at Pueblo del Arroyo 18 are of the comparatively thin, broad,
shallow-troughed variety that I designated "tabular" at Pueblo Bonito,
6 are thicker but likewise troughed, 1 has an over-all grinding surface;
7 mills and 11 fragments are not positively identified in our
field notes. Where present, the trough, or mano groove, was open at
the lower end.

Deflectors in Room 3 and Kiva "b" are included among our tabular
metates and we might have added to our six thicker troughed mills
the one that lies, pierced and inverted, over the outside ventilator shaft
of Room 3 (pl. 50, B). One tabular metate, 17 inches long by 14
inches wide by 1½ inches thick with a mano trough 14 inches long
by 7½ inches wide, had been on the roof of one-story Room 65 and
had fallen with collapse of the roof. An unused metate (U.S.N.M.
No. 334856) measures 16¾ by 9¼ by 2 inches; its indicated mano
trough, 13 by 5¼ inches, is roughened for the first grinding. To maintain
their efficiency, grinding surfaces had to be "sharpened" every
few days by repecking with hammerstones (Bartlett, 1933, p. 4).

Our lone example of a metate with over-all grinding surface is likewise
the only one found mounted in a bin (pl. 48, right). However,
measurements for an incompletely described mill recovered in Room
23 (16″ long × 1″ thick × 10½″ wide at one end and 6″ at the other)
suggest that it may have been of the same kind.

The binned metate in Room 5 belongs to a class usually described
as "flat" or "flat slab" although the grinding surface, however flat from
side to side, is invariably concave longitudinally. Kidder (1932,
p. 68) describes the type as "plain-surfaced." Brew (1946, p. 147,
fig. 174, g-i) reports two from Site 12, a P. II settlement with Mancos
black-on-white pottery on Alkali Ridge, southeastern Utah.
O'Bryan (1950, p. 83, pl. 29, f) found one not unlike ours on the
floor of a kiva at Site 102, Mesa Verde National Park, a "preponderantly
Mancos Black-on-white" site he dates at about A. D. 950. Lancaster
and Van Cleave (1954, p. 99) describe the finding of a "flat
slab" metate in the kiva-to-tower tunnel at Sun Point Pueblo, a Mesa

Verde ruin somewhat later than O'Bryan's Site 102 but, nevertheless,
with Mancos black-on-white pottery predominant. O'Bryan (ibid.,
p. 109) believes that "flat" metates had largely superseded the troughed
variety by the end of the McElmo Phase (ca. A. D. 1050-1150), and
Morris (1939, p. 133) seems to agree. My descriptive term "over-all
grinding surface," while cumbersome, is clear and precise. Neither
"flat" nor "flat slab," unqualified, correctly describes the mill typical
of the great Chaco houses.

Woodbury (1939, p. 58) lists one of "the plain surface (slab) type"
among 22 metates recovered at a small settlement about half a mile
southeast of Pueblo del Arroyo. He misinterprets Pepper, however
(Woodbury, 1954, p. 59), as does Katharine Bartlett (1933, p. 24),
in attributing "flat" or "flat slab" metates to Pueblo Bonito. When
Pepper, not anticipating present-day terminology, referred to metates
"of the usual slab form" or to "the flat metate" (Pepper, 1920, pp. 58,
90, 295), he had in mind the broad, thin, tabular mill of the Old
Bonitians. There is no record of a metate with over-all grinding
surface from Pueblo Bonito. And the finding of one at Pueblo del
Arroyo would be surprising were it not for the fact that Room 5 is
itself a stranger in Chaco Canyon.

Of 124 manos and 19 fragments reported in our field notes, all but
one are described as rectangular with a single flat grinding surface and
ends curved to match the concave sides of the mano trough. The
exception (U.S.N.M. No. 334820) is a 3½-inch-long fragment of a
two-faced triangular mano of very fine-grained sandstone, 3⅛ inches
in original width and with a present maximum thickness of ¾ inch,
base to apex. It lay on the floor in the southeast corner of Room
9B-II and both faces are covered with blue paint.

Abraders, usually of friable sandstone, coarse- or fine-grained,
were grinding tools. The shape of an abrader does not always reveal
a specialized function, but marks left on diversified objects identify
a common purpose for the group, reduction by abrasion. Some abraders
remained fixed in position while in use; others were held in the
hand and moved back and forth upon an object in process of alteration.
The two grooved abraders shown on plate 40, t, u, so-called
"arrowshaft smoothers," are in this latter category. Likewise, blocks
of sandstone employed in erasing ax marks and knots from ceiling
beams may be described as active abraders.

Passive abraders, those remaining stationary, vary in size and texture.
That illustrated by figure 30 is of siltstone and is worn equally

A. Figurine fragments from area west of Rooms 42-49.

Plate 36

B. Kaolin cakes molded in a broken pitcher.

Plate 37.—Upper, comblike implements of bone (a-e), and lower, bone awls (f-o), pin (p),
bull roarer (q), antler punch (r), and scraper (s).

Plate 38.—Objects and implements of wood, antler, and cedar bark.

A.

Plate 39.—Hewn pine timber from Room 16 showing abraded sides
and stone-ax cut end.

B.

Plate 40.—Upper, arrowheads and knives (a-n); center, jar covers (o-r); lower, abraders
(s-u), discoidal stone (v), and a clay stopper for a jar (w).

Plate 41.—Upper, stone axes (a-h), and lower, paint mortars (i-k).

Plate 42.—Sandstone tablets with spalled edges (a-c), polished sandstone
tablets (d-g), a sandal stone (h), ground and polished slate tablets
(i-j).

Plate 43.—Pueblo del Arroyo from the northwest.
(Photograph by Charles Martin, 1920.)

A. Pueblo del Arroyo from the west, Jackson's "old arroyo" at the right; in the
shadowed bank at left, above a sunlit spot at the bottom, wide-spreading silt strata and a
wall fragment that proved to be part of a McElmo Tower.

Plate 44

B. Jackson's "old arroyo" carried away the south side of the Kiva B enclosure but
left part of its west wall (above the standing figure).

(Photographs by Neil M. Judd, 1923.)

Plate 45

Upper: At left center constructional debris fills an angle formed by the Kiva B enclosure and
remains of a single wall extending westward from the southwest corner of the ruin.

(Photograph by O. C. Havens, 1923.)

Lower: Kiva B abuts the pueblo at its outer southwest corner. The paired ends of Room 8A
ceiling beams show at either side of a jutting rooftop abutment.

(Photograph by Neil M. Judd, 1926.)

on both sides in the shaping of turquoise and shell ornaments.[3] A
block of coarse red sandstone from the fill in Kiva "c" had been used
for the sharpening of bone awls before it was burned and broken
(pl. 40, s). In a similar way doorsills here and there and even exposed
blocks in house walls were occasionally appropriated for whetting
bone awls or stone axes.

A succession of X's incised on the smoothly rubbed face of a sandstone
building block (U.S.N.M. No. 334872) from the razed north
enclosing wall of Kiva "d," west of Room 48, might have originated
in the casual sharpening of a bone awl. So, too, the crosshatching on
a fragment of friable yellow sandstone (fig. 38). The inhabitants of
Pueblo del Arroyo were not given to the embellishment of house walls,
but it seems quite within reason that an occasional individual, assigned
the tedium of pointing a bone awl, might have been momentarily
inspired to elaborate the permanent record of his industry.

Figure 31 illustrates the two largest of six delicate little abraders,
all broken, found in Room 26 together with the tablet described above
(fig. 30). All six are of exceptionally fine-grained sandstone; four
are planoconvex in cross section and the other two are flat with edges
beveled on one side. The six average only [fraction 1 by 10] inch thick at the butt
end; none exhibits any perceptible concavity owing to attrition. I have
no idea what these fragile implements were used for, but the Zuñi
man who found them, a spare-time jeweler, called them "files" for
shaping turquoise and other ornaments.

We have three fragments of abraders that may be likened to saws,
two of siltstone and one of medium-coarse sandstone. The latter is
the Roman-nosed end of a ½-inch-thick blade with V-shaped cutting
edge (U.S.N.M. No. 334812). The larger of the two siltstone fragments,
3 inches long, 2 inches wide, ⅛ inch in maximum thickness,
likewise has a knifelike edge with longitudinal striations on both
sides (No. 334810).

Knives at Pueblo del Arroyo were made from chalcedony, obsidian,
and similar glassy rocks. Our examples include the two on plate 40, m,
n, and five fragments. One of these latter (fig. 32) is of more than
usual interest because, following the initial flaking, the blade was
abraded on both sides and subsequently rechipped in part along each
edge. Evidence that household sweepings were sometimes dumped in
two or more places is confirmed by a broken blade (pl. 40, n) whose

tip was recovered in Room 28 and the butt in Room 32. There is no
opening in the first-story wall separating these two rooms.

Flakes struck from suitable rocks and, if necessary, sharpened by
chipping likewise served as knives (pl. 40, k, l).

Arrowheads from Pueblo del Arroyo are preponderantly of one
type, that notched at right angles to the long axis, but may be divided
into two subgroups: those with straight or slightly concave base
(pl. 40, h, i, j) and those with slightly convex base (pl. 40, c, f, g).
There may be no significance in this division, but our collection includes
14 in the first group, 16 in the second. Length varies from
[fraction 11 by 16] to 1½ inches; all are side notched and thus agree with the dominant
type from the later sections of Pueblo Bonito. In addition there are
three small barbed points from which the stem is missing (pl. 40, a, b).
Only two arrowheads were found in the South Annex, in Room 4 and
the long room east of Kiva B, and both belong to our first subgroup
(pl. 40, e, i). Of five points recovered among the ruined structures
west of the pueblo, two belong to our first subgroup, two to the second,
and one is barbed.

The tip of a green argillite blade, rubbed to a velvety smoothness
and with edges saw cut to simulate chipping (fig. 33), is more likely
to have seen service in some ritual rather than in warfare or hunting.
Found in the milling room, 55, a fact that contributes nothing, the
fragment nevertheless is reminiscent of a statement by Cabeza de
Vaca, namely, that somewhere on his incredible journey across northern
Mexico in the early sixteenth century, unidentified Indians gave
one of his companions "five emeralds, shaped as arrowpoints, which
arrows they use in their feasts and dances" (Bandelier, 1905, p. 156).

Drills are four in number, three of chalcedony and one of jasper.
Two are reworked fragments of arrowheads and a third is part of a
broken blade that, despite a width of ⅞ inch, nevertheless had been
renotched for hafting (U.S.N.M. No. 334794).

Scrapers.—During seven seasons' research at Pueblo Bonito and
Pueblo del Arroyo, we found only one chipped end scraper and that
in Kiva J, Pueblo del Arroyo (U.S.N.M. No. 334796). From the
same ruin we recovered only seven flakes chipped as side scrapers.
Two are shown on plate 40, k, l.

Hoes.—Figure 34 illustrates what I prefer to call a hoe although it
is clearly a reworked tcamahia, a type of prehistoric celtlike implement
featured on certain Hopi altars (Fewkes, 1900, p. 982; 1909, p. 39).
Our specimen, of dark-gray limestone, has been made from a tcamahia
by narrowing the upper third with a stone hammer and then abrading

the rough edges. Attached to the end of a straight wooden handle, it
would provide a very serviceable scuffle hoe.

Part of a second hoe blade, of the same gray limestone but wider
and with a squarer cutting edge, was recovered from Room 54
(U.S.N.M. No. 334818), and the battered remnant of a third example
lay among floor sweepings in Room 62 (No. 334819). This
latter is of the fawn-colored laminiferous shale favored for hoes by
P. II-III peoples of the Four Corners area.

I prefer to call these implements hoes rather than tcamahias because
examples in the National Museum (Nos. 35397A, 303258) and
elsewhere provide convincing evidence that they are successors to the
equally efficient mountain-sheep-horn hoes of the Basket Makers.
That some of these prehistoric blades eventually found a place in
modern Hopi rituals is not to be questioned, but midway, in early
P. III times, they were still hoes although perhaps only hand hoes or
trowels. The three from Pueblo del Arroyo, two of them fragments,
were all imported and all had been reworked.

Jar covers.—Of 20 typical jar covers brought to Washington for
the national collections, a majority is discoidal. They vary in diameter
from 2½ to 8⅛ inches. All but two are of sandstone; all were made
by spalling off the edges of a thin tablet and then by abrading the
sides and perimeter. Four are reworked fragments of thin, smooth,
fine-grained sandstone tablets at least one of which had been sandal
shaped. One cover, 6½ inches in diameter by ⅝ inch thick and made
from a section of a sandstone concretion, was found in Kiva B and
had seen secondary use in preparation of yellow paint (U.S.N.M.
No. 334839). Traces of red paint remain on two other specimens. A
small squared cover (pl. 40, r) from Kiva "b" was shaped from a
slab of mottled slate that could have originated in the San Juan
Mountains.[4] The same mountainous area is also given as the most
likely source of the calcareous siltstone from which was made a small
discoidal jar cover found in Room 24 (U.S.N.M. No. 334833).

Discoidal.—A single discoidal stone that, in shape and workmanship,
is indistinguishable from the well-known Chunkee stones of the
southeastern United States was described on page 104 (pl. 40, v).

Paints and paint mortars.—We unearthed only one piece of red
paint worth cataloging—a columnar bit of reddle 1[fraction 3 by 16] inches long and
rubbed at both ends (U.S.N.M. No. 334782)—but we noted from
time to time stones on which paints had been prepared. In addition
to the three jar covers mentioned above, we retained two manos and

a mano fragment stained, respectively, with red, green, and blue paint.
A bricklike block of fine-grained rock from Room 41, smoothed on
all six sides (No. 334824), is coated with a black liquid that may be
carbon paint for pottery decoration. "The black material appears to
be organic matter [since it] can be driven off by heating to red heat,
leaving a brownish residue."[5]

Kaolin provided a chalklike white paint and a surface coating for
pottery. The three cakes of prepared kaolin shown on plate 36, B,
were molded in the body portion of a broken pitcher, as we know from
the identical concavity on their bottoms. Found in the southeast
corner of Room 51, the three cakes clearly were made by pouring a
thick kaolin solution into the container and allowing it to harden.
At Zuñi, toward the close of the nineteenth century, a surface slip
for earthenware vessels was prepared in much the same way. "A
white clay is dissolved in water," writes Mrs. Stevenson (1904,
p. 375), "and then made into cones which are dried in the sun. When
required for use these cones are rubbed to powder on a stone, again
mixed with water, and applied in the liquid state . . . with a rabbitskin
mop."

A smaller cake of kaolin, gouged out on top, was found in the fill
of Room 47 (U.S.N.M. No. 334786).

Two paint mortars, both of unusually fine-grained sandstone, are
illustrated on plate 41, i, k. The first has no trace of paint in its
¼-inch-deep basin, but on the second, k, red paint had been ground
in the square compartment, black paint in the other. Each basin has
a maximum depth of [fraction 7 by 16] inch. This double mortar was among a number
of unusual artifacts recovered in Room 27 among the wreckage
of an upper story. In the adjoining room, 23, we found half of a
sandstone doorslab (U.S.N.M. No. 334849) on which yellow and red
ochers had, in turn, been ground and liquidized.

The third specimen (pl. 41, j), with a secondary depression in the
middle of the grinding surface, is of reddish sandstone and bears
traces of black paint. It comes from Kiva D, Pueblo Bonito, and is
shown here merely for comparison.

Whitewash, while not a paint in the same sense as the pigments
mentioned above, was in local use as we know from traces of it here
and there, and I believe the light-gray, chalky sandstone (U.S.N.M.
No. 334877) piled in the southwest corner of Room 46B was whitewash
stored against future need. Our Zuñi workmen reported a deposit

of it in a shallow cave high up on the south side of the canyon,
overlooking Casa Rinconada.

Pestles.—Of five pestlelike specimens in the collection none bears
any suggestion of paint. One (U.S.N.M. No. 334861) is of friable
sandstone and more or less discoidal; another (No. 334814), likewise
of friable sandstone, is cone shaped. A third specimen (No. 334772)
is of the soft, fine-textured, light-colored sandstone used as whitewash,
while the remaining two (Nos. 334771, 334862) are parts of
hard cobbles doubtless brought to Chaco Canyon from some northern
riverbed. In each case the grinding surface lies at a slight angle to
the long axis.

Axes and mauls.—We recovered eight stone axes and ax fragments,
all made from waterworn cobbles. Only three (pl. 41, a, d, f)
retain their cutting edges. One, c, was never finished; one, e, was
merely notched for hafting. Another, f, made from an oval cobble
of weathered arkosic sandstone and notched transversely across the
poll, is too light in weight, 8¼ ounces, to have been of real service in
timber work. The last two specimens in the series originally had the
interrupted, or three-quarter, groove of southern axes, but in both
cases the groove was subsequently continued all the way around. The
smaller of these two (pl. 41, g) last saw use as a maul or clubhead,
but its companion, fractured by a single unfortunate blow, was carried
to Kiva I for the reshaping that never came.

Hematite cylinders.—Two specimens come from Kiva "c" and from
Room 4, respectively. The former (U.S.N.M. No. 334781), ½ inch
in diameter by 1[fraction 3 by 16] inches long, was found at the north end of a pole
imprint paralleling the west margin of the kiva's Chaco-like subfloor
vault. The second example (No. 334780), longer than normal (2¾
inches), is oval in cross section and varies in maximum diameter from
⅞ inch at one end to ⅝ at the other. It is possible this cylinder was
never finished since longitudinal abrading facets remain upon its
surface.

Stone tablets.—Five remarkable sandstone tablets, together with a
number of other unusual artifacts, were found in Room 23. All are
of exceptionally fine-grained calcareous sandstone; all were shattered
when the ceilings and upper walls crashed through into the lower
room. The more broken of the five (U.S.N.M. No. 334845) measures
14¾ by 8 by ¼ inches; the others are shown on plate 42, d-g. First of
these four bears on the opposite face traces of yellow paint, apparently
ground and mixed there. The second (the red line and enclosed area
at upper left are ingrained) and fourth tablets are slightly discolored

by smoke on the unphotographed side; the third, as will be noted, is
stained by twilled matting. The V-mark on this third specimen and
the scratch above are scars from the excavator's pick.

A sixth tablet from Room 23, of slate rather than sandstone and
discoidal instead of rectangular, may be seen on plate 42, i. Despite a
degree of polish, striations left by the abrader remain on both faces
and around the circumference. Thickness varies from a maximum of
⅞ inch at the center to about [fraction 7 by 16] inch at the edge, the reduction being
from both faces. A rectangular slate tablet, abraded to a thickness
of ⅝ inch at the edge and ¾ inch at the middle, was among the diversified
objects hurled into Room 27 by collapse of its ceiling (pl. 42, j).

Tablets made from comparatively thin slabs of sandstone by spalling
back the edges and leaving the natural cleavage planes on either side
often served to close doorways or ventilator openings (pl. 51, lower).
However, narrow tablets such as plate 42, a, b, from Room 65, a storeroom,
clearly were intended for some other purpose.

Sandal-shaped tablet.—Only one (pl. 42, h) was found in Room 23
with the five thin sandstone tablets described above and other artifacts.
From the size of this lone example, 14½ inches long by 7¾
inches maximum width, we may assume that it probably served as an
altar piece in some unknown ritual. A sandal-shaped specimen carved
from wood and painted is considered on page 131 (fig. 29).

The well-worn fallacy that sandal-shaped tablets were forms or
patterns used by the prehistoric Pueblo Indians when weaving their
footgear apparently originated with a quotation from Frank Hamilton
Cushing published by Dr. J. F. Snyder (1899, p. 8) in his short
article on the Cliff Dweller "sandal last." Snyder's almost forgotten
paper was prompted by a "baked clay" impression of a decorated
sandal in the M. C. Long collection from Butler Wash, southeastern
Utah. This rare specimen, now fortunately preserved in the Museum
of Northern Arizona, has more recently been described by John C.
McGregor (1948, pp. 24-28).

Effigy.—A carving that may represent the head of a mountain lion
(fig. 35) was found in the sandy-earth fill of Room 64. It is of
yellow friable sandstone and its nose was broken away so long ago
there is no perceptible difference in color between the fractured area
and that adjoining. Eyes are not indicated. The neck, apparently designed
to be socketed, preserves on its uneven base pittings of the
shaping hammer.

Mountain lion, "hunter god of the north" (Cushing, 1883, p. 25),
is invariably carved from rock of a yellow color; carvings of other

colors identify lesser gods associated with the other five directions.
In 1897 Fewkes (1900, p. 980) saw a mountain-lion effigy on the
altar of the Antelope Society at the Walpi Snake ceremony; Mrs.
Stevenson (1904, p. 245) reported a "cougar of cream-yellow sandstone"
among the animal representations on the altar of the Eagle
Down Fraternity at Zuñi. A mountain-lion figure is kept close at
hand in a Zuñi household and is fed every day while a man is deer
hunting (Parsons, 1939, p. 304). Again (ibid., p. 480), "there is
always the greatest reluctance to remove a fetish, which is sometimes
left behind, but looked after, in an otherwise abandoned house."

Room 64 had been vacated and abandoned, since we detected an
appreciable amount of floor sweepings in its 4-feet-deep sandy fill.
The "lion" head was found in this fill together with a large tabular
metate, fragments of a smaller troughed metate, four manos, part of
a turkey skeleton, miscellaneous flint and obsidian chippings, 700 potsherds,
and like discards.

Pipe.—An inch-long fragment from Room 55 is our sole evidence
that stone pipes were known at Pueblo del Arroyo (U.S.N.M.
No. 334687). It is of polished steatite and of the "cigar-holder" type
familiar throughout the Chumash area of California.

Miscellaneous stone.—A fragment of glassy, vesicular slag
(U.S.N.M. No. 334800), recovered near floor level on the east side
of Kiva C, was described in connection with comparable material from
Pueblo Bonito (Judd, 1954, p. 293, pl. 70, fig. b). It is 4 by 2¾ by 1¼
inches in size and floats. Mineralogists disagree as to its origin, but
doubt that it was a consequence of the fire that destroyed Kiva C.