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IMPLEMENTS OF STONE

Hammers, simplest of all aboriginal tools, came into use with the
very dawn of the human race. Any tough stone that might be grasped
in the hand sufficed for a hammer, but its surface was invariably
fractured with another stone to produce jagged faces and thus increase
its effectiveness. When these rough edges were worn away,
the hammer was discarded. On one of our numerous trips to Zuñi
I saw an old gentleman, totally blind, driving a wedge into an ax
handle with a rock from his doorstep (pl. 23, right). To him there
was nothing novel in this, for he had been pounding things with similar

stones since early boyhood. And the ancestors of this ancient, having
no knowledge of metals, were doubtless more expert than he in improvising
tools from the materials at hand.

As their fathers did before them, the artisans of Pueblo Bonito
employed hammerstones for breaking or abrading rocks. With stone
hammers they struck off chunks of flint that might be carried home
and made into arrowheads and knives. By patient pounding, by the
slow attrition that comes with repeated blows of stone on stone, they
shaped axheads from water-worn cobbles, transformed sandstone
blocks into mills for grinding maize, and dressed the slabs used in
house construction. In primitive hands the stone hammer and the
abrader answered all those diverse needs for which the modern craftsman
requires an assortment of chisels, mauls, and other steel
implements.

Bonitian hammers (pl. 24, a) are mostly of quartzite, silicified
wood, and flint because these are the toughest rocks to be found in
northwestern New Mexico. They vary in weight from a few ounces
to a pound and a half. No other artifact was so frequently encountered
during our explorations. Pepper tabulates 688 hammerstones
unearthed by the Hyde Expedition; my own field notes mention the
finding of 653, and we may have seen and ignored half as many more
while trenching rubbish heaps and tracing deeply buried, partly razed
walls.

That the time required in making stone implements by aboriginal
methods is really much less than the uninitiated might suppose has
been amply demonstrated in the laboratories of the Smithsonian Institution
by Gill, Holmes, McGuire, and others. DeLancy Gill, for
example, with a jasper hammer and a sandstone abrader as his only
tools, in 21 hours fashioned from a quartzite cobble a most excellent
ax measuring 4⅝ by 3⅝ by 1⅝ inches. Like the aborigines whose work
he so successfully imitated, Gill found that the effectiveness of a stone
hammer was materially reduced when its faceted surface became
smooth through use; that it was easier to make a new hammer than to
refracture an old one. This observation undoubtedly explains the
abundance of discarded hammerstones at every Pueblo ruin.

Abraders were to the Bonitians what planes, rasps, and carborundum
wheels are to twentieth-century farmers. They were the tools
with which other tools were made, the chief reliance of the woodworker.
Abrasive stones were never standardized; we find them in
all manner of shapes and sizes. Some are merely casual fragments,
used once and tossed aside. Others are so carefully made, so trim
and neatly squared, as obviously to have been designed for special
purposes.

Throughout the sandy Chaco district sandstone is present in unlimited
quantities and in various degrees of fineness. The coarser
varieties were utilized for shaping and smoothing artifacts of stone,
for dressing wooden tablets, and for rubbing knots off ceiling beams.
Sandstone of much finer texture was employed for fragile materials
and more delicate tasks, as when shells and turquoise were fashioned
into objects of personal adornment. That the abrasive properties of
Chaco Canyon sandstone are still appreciated was clearly demonstrated
one day when I chanced to see one of our Navaho workmen pick up
a spall and use it to take the rough edge off a broken incisor.

When a Bonitian had an ax to grind he rubbed it up and down on
the cliff back of the village (pl. 23, left) or on any other handy surface.
Perhaps half of the remaining doorsills in Pueblo Bonito are
scored by the sharpening of stone axes, whatever the housewives may
have had to say about it. On detached blocks here and there and occasionally
on house walls one notes where bone awls were pointed,
where digging sticks were re-edged, and where various other implements
were whetted for the task in hand.

The abrasive stones we recovered from rooms and rubbish heaps
may be divided into two fairly equal classes: "active" and "passive."
Active abraders—the designation is literal—are those held in the hand
and used after the manner of a file, while a passive abrader is one
which remained stationary as the object being altered was moved back
and forth upon it. Naturally the type employed was more or less
determined by the size and shape of the object to be made and the
ease with which it could be managed. Whether the abrader was
rubbed on the artifact or the artifact on the abrader, it was the cutting
properties of sand that produced the desired result.

The three illustrated in figure 29 are typical examples of active
abraders. Although commonly described as "arrowshaft smoothers,"
their best-known function, they were also employed at Pueblo Bonito
for smoothing willow shoots for ceilings in houses of second-type
construction, for rounding spindle shafts and similar slender objects
of wood. Among several somewhat related specimens is one with 10
concave faces (fig. 30), the result of friction through which a bow,
a digging stick, a paho, or artifact of comparable diameter was brought
to its final form. We may list also with the active abraders spalls with
worn edges, sandstone saws, delicate filelike tools, and pointed implements,
both flat and rounded. From Room 318 came a series of five
conical abraders, varying from half an inch to an inch in diameter
at the butt and from 1¾ to 4½ inches in length. Together, they suggest
a definite set of tools (pl. 25, a-e).

In figure 31 is shown a section severed from a thin sandstone tablet.

Fig. 29.—Active abraders.

This specimen illustrates clearly the manner in which stone was used
to cut stone. An edged abrader was moved patiently back and forth
upon the tablet until the resultant groove was deep enough to permit
breaking off of the unwanted portion. But the latter, in this particular
instance, was itself utilized since its cut edge has been worn to a degree
not adequately represented in the drawing.

Fig. 30.—A multiple-grooved abrader.

Fig. 31.—Portion of stone tablet severed by sawing.

In contrast to the more or less chance fragments comprising this
first group, "passive" abraders—those remaining in fixed position as
objects were rubbed upon them—may be anything from the cliff back
of the village to a half-pound lap stone. While an irregular block
might suffice for pointing a bone awl (fig. 32), most passive abraders
are rectangular, and it is noted that the care exercised in shaping
them, and their thinness, vary directly with the texture of the stone.
Some are polished to velvet smoothness (fig. 33, b), some are worn

Fig. 32.—Fragment of sandstone on which awls were sharpened.

Fig. 33.—Tablets serving as passive abraders.

unevenly like a novice's whetstone, and some show median, longitudinal
attrition (fig. 33, a). I believe these latter, always of finegrained
sandstone, were used in the manufacture of ornaments, a
surmise strengthened by the fact that, in several instances, the grinding
surface retains traces of some unidentifiable white substance, perhaps
the calcareous matter of which shells are formed or the sericitized
granitic rock in which New Mexico turquoise usually occurs.

Fig. 34.—Sandstone "files."

The filelike tools mentioned among our "active" abraders merit an
additional word. Six were found in Room 26, Pueblo del Arroyo. All
are broken, but this is not surprising considering the fact that they
average only a tenth of an inch thick at the broader end (fig. 34). Four are planoconvex in cross section, while the other two are flat,
with edges beveled on one side. A single comparable specimen was
recovered at Pueblo Bonito, in Room 328, and this also is flat on both
sides (U.S.N.M. No. 335628).

It is certain that these little instruments served as abraders, yet
for what particular purpose I cannot say. One of our Zuñi, an expert

worker of turquoise, described them as files for making beads and
proceeded to demonstrate while I held my breath lest he break the
fragile thing. But this same man, like other Zuñi lapidaries I have
watched, ground his own turquoise beads and pendants in the old
proven way—individually on a sandstone tablet. So his explanation
of our filelike implements, however plausible, is doubtless to be taken
with a grain of salt.

Fig. 35.—Sandstone "saws."

Sandstone saws (fig. 35).—This term will serve to describe an even
dozen knifelike implements made of clayey sandstone. The two illustrated,
the only complete ones in the lot, are double-edged, while nine
of those remaining are sharpened on one edge only. All indicate an
original length of at least twice the width, with thickness varying
from one-sixteenth to one-eighth of an inch. Six were found in
rooms of third- and fourth-type masonry, while only one came from
the older part of Pueblo Bonito.

As saws, these fragile blades were used to sever stone, bone, and
other materials. Their edges are beveled equally from both sides, and
some are noticeably dulled. One fragment retains traces of a calcareous

substance as if it had been employed not only for cutting
pieces of shell but also as a block on which to polish them. Grooves
in cut bone correspond with the V-edges of these sandstone saws.

Two other fragments originally included in this series are found,
on reexamination, to be parts of small tablets. They were made of
the same clayey sandstone; they are equally thin, but their edges are
less knifelike and their faces are slightly concave owing to longitudinal
attrition.

Rubbing and smoothing stones, so-called (pl. 25, lower), are commonly
thought to have been utilized for smoothing earthen floors and
newly plastered walls. They would have answered these purposes admirably,
but none of our examples shows the transverse striations that
must have resulted had it been so employed. The Pueblo woman's
hand is her trowel in all plastering operations today.

Often made from water-worn cobbles, smoothing stones are oval,
discoidal, or rectangular in shape and of a size easily held by one's
outstretched fingers. Most of our series show wear on both sides, the
faces being flat or slightly convex. All are of sandstone, usually finegrained,
except three foreign to the Chaco area—one of grayishbrown
vesicular lava and two of a dark, igneous rock mineralogists
call gabbro. One in the series has served as an improvised palette
and another is stained red all over, thus evidencing a final use in
powdering ocher.

Being of convenient size, rubbing stones were frequently substituted
for other household implements, especially hammers and mullers.
This is proved by their battered edges and by the shallow, circular
depressions not uncommonly noted on doorslabs and old metates.
Two of those illustrated (pl. 25, figs. j and k) are from storeroom
300B; 51 rubbing stones, manos, and re-used mano fragments
partly enclosed a pile of potter's clay at the south end of Room 212.

Pottery polishers, the water-worn pebbles with which Pueblo
women traditionally gloss the surfaces of earthenware vessels prior
to ornamentation and firing, were little used at Pueblo Bonito. Although
numbers of unworked pebbles and small cobbles were unearthed,
our collection includes only 11 showing perceptible wear and
four of these served also as hammerstones. Only one came from the
old section of the village; none was found in Pueblo del Arroyo. And
yet some of the oldest as well as some of the latest poettery we exhumed
was clearly stone-polished.

Sandstone tablets were found in all parts of the ruin. Some, shaped
and roughly dressed with stone hammers from slabs an inch or so
thick, were designed as storeroom doors (pl. 26, B), others, of smaller

size, covered ventilators and like wall openings. Sandstone slabs
were found in position over the ventilator ducts in Kivas J, K, and
N; reworked door fragments sealed subfloor repositories in Kivas
D and R. Tablets 2 to 10 inches long and of varying texture, used
primarily as passive abraders, may be identified by the marks of
abrasion. But there are others, rough or smoothly finished, for which
we find no satisfactory explanation.

Five very unusual sandstone tablets were found in Room 23, Pueblo
del Arroyo. Nothing equal to them either in size or workmanship was
disclosed at Pueblo Bonito. Indeed, the only ones at all comparable
are the four illustrated in plate 27, a-d, and these are only about half
as large as the five from Pueblo del Arroyo. The first of the four,
of cream-colored marlaceous shale foreign to Chaco Canyon,[1] was
recovered from Kiva Q; the others, from Room 326. The fourth, d,
was among the burial furniture of two middle-aged females, Nos. 8
and 9 (pl. 95, upper), but this fact provides no hint as to its purpose.

Work slabs (?).—Three examples will suffice to represent a relatively
small group, neither metates nor tablets, whose real function
we do not know but which I am designating "work slabs" under the
belief that each was utilized in some domestic task. The specimens
are all of fine-grained sandstone; some have taken on a near-polish.
Had they been used in the preparation of clay for pottery manufacture
—an old metate, a flat rock, or a board answers this purpose among
living Pueblos—the marks of crushing implements and scratches from
tempering materials would be evident.

One of our three examples has, indeed, been slightly worn the full
width on each side by friction of a muller (U.S.N.M. No. 335897).
It is a slab of chocolate-colored sandstone, 16 by 7¼ by 1¼ inches,
whose natural cleavage planes required little alteration; both faces
bear traces of a black pigment. A second specimen (No. 335898),
11⅝ by 9¾ by 1[fraction 11 by 16] inches, with neatly worked edges and rounded
corners, was so embedded that its one smoothed face lay flush with
the floor in the middle east half of Room 291; it had no apparent
connection with a nearby series of dismantled mealing bins. In Room
268 a like slab was similarly embedded in the floor, against the north
wall and adjoining an oval fireplace.

The third example (No. 335899), of limy sandstone as smooth as
velvet, is equally puzzling. It measures 16½ by 10⅝ by 1⅛ inches, has

rounded edges, and is polished on both sides. Longitudinally it is
slightly concavoconvex; neither face is scored by abrading implements.
When found the slab was leaning against the wall as an improvised
step to the hatchway that formed the only exit from subterranean,
rubbish-filled Room 255. Like the other two it shows no
evidence of use over a fire and thus cannot be a baking stone such
as one may see in modern Zuñi and Hopi homes.

Jar covers.—Not long after fired pottery came into general use
throughout the San Juan area, the jar cover followed as a natural
accompaniment. A sandstone slab, reduced with stone hammers to
the size desired, answered as lid for a storage pot buried under the
floor or set next to the wall of a granary, but a jar used daily at mealtime
required a cover more pleasing to the eye. Among the undescribed
objects from a Pueblo I pit house in Chaco Canyon is the
larger portion of a sandstone disk, a quarter of an inch thick by 4⅞
inches in diameter, whose two faces and chipped edge have been
partly smoothed by abrasion (Judd, 1924a, p. 411. U.S.N.M. No.
324830). Small-mouthed vessels at Pueblo Bonito were customarily
covered by equally thin but completely smoothed disks (pl. 24, b).
We found none actually in position but noted several instances where
pitchers placed as burial offerings had toppled to one side, dislodging
their covers.

Disks were most numerous in rooms whose contents included
cylindrical-necked pitchers and cylindrical vases. We retained 123
for the national collections. These are entirely representative and
show every possible variation from those rudely shaped by percussion
to those abraded to almost machine-made exactness both in diameter
and thickness. All but three are sandstone: two are of slate (the
reworked fragments of larger disks), and one is of lignite—the
periphery is rubbed but both faces show the natural plane of cleavage.
Only 13 are more than 5 inches in diameter. Five have been used as
chance palettes on which to prepare red, yellow, or white pigment;
three served as passive abraders whereon materials were ground by a
broadly circular motion. A few covers are rather squarish; nine are
plainly reworked fragments of tablets such as those shown in plate
27, a-d. Eleven were recovered from kivas. Twelve specimens, all of
fine-grained sandstone but varying in size and circularity, measure
1½ inches or less in diameter and thus should have been listed under
another category.

As to provenience, whereas 62.6 percent of our series came from
Late Bonitian buildings (57 percent from third-period structures
alone), Hyde's tabulation of those Pepper unearthed, taking "disks"

and "jar covers" together, shows 69.8 percent from Old Bonitian
houses and only 30.2 percent from later dwellings and kivas (Pepper,
1920, pp. 363-365). Seventy-five covers (ibid., p. 125, gives the
number as 121) were in Room 28 and closely associated with an unusual
assemblage of pottery that included both early and late types.

In addition to the foregoing, we encountered a few improvisations.
Among these was the bottom of a corrugated pot that, with a minimum
of chipping on the periphery, was converted into a satisfactory
jar cover 3⅛ inches in diameter (U.S.N.M. No. 336106). And in
Room 326 we found a stopper of unfired clay, 3¼ inches in diameter
by 1⅛ inches thick (No. 336082). Its upper surface is slightly convex
and somewhat irregular as if pressed by the heel of the hand; the
under side bears angular imprints of some hard, fragmentary substance
such as turquoise matrix.

In a region where the casual tourist sees only sand and sandstone,
the men of Pueblo Bonito found nodules of chalcedony, chert, jasper,
and obsidian. Flakes struck from these were carried back to the
village and fashioned into knives and arrowheads with stone hammers
and bone chipping tools.

Cherty concretions infrequently occur in the massive sandstones
bordering Chaco Canyon; occasional outcroppings of flint may be
noted on the mesas above; petrified logs are exposed now and then
in the blue clays of the Ojo Alamo section, to the northward. My
Navaho workmen said that weathered pieces of obsidian could be
gathered along the Continental Divide, some 40 miles east of Pueblo
Bonito; they professed not to know the source of chalcedony which
geologists assure me should appear, in concretionary form, almost
anywhere in the Chaco district. The light-gray, fine-grained quartzite
from which a few of our chipped specimens were made doubtless
came from the Animas River valley. It is abundant there and was
commonly utilized by the inhabitants of Aztec (Morris, 1919a, p. 34).

Knives.—The most effective cutting tools known to the Bonitians
were chipped from obsidian, flint, and similar glassy rocks. While any
feather-edge flake might serve a passing need, the real Pueblo knife
was a leaf-shaped blade or one resembling an oversized arrowhead.
With the possible exception of the two largest, specimens a-h shown on
plate 28 were doubtless hafted for use. Flint knives in their original
wooden handles are uncommon but by no means rare in the Pueblo
area. Morris (1919a, fig. 17, p. 31) figures three from Aztec Ruin;
Pepper (1920, p. 326) found one in Room 107B at Pueblo Bonito.

Describing the Indian method of skinning buffalo as practiced on
the Great Plains in 1541, Castañeda says they used "a flint as large

as a finger, tied in a little stick, with as much ease as if working with
a good iron tool" (Winship, 1896, p. 528). Stone knives and arrowpoints
were in daily use as late as 1871 by the Apache, Paiute, and
other nomadic tribes of the Southwest (Hoffman, 1896, pp. 281-283).

Because it is easily chipped into a keen-edged cutting tool, obsidian
was a favorite material of all Indians having access to it. The obsidian
blade shown in figure h of plate 28, the finest in our collection, comes
from Pueblo del Arroyo. The large fragment, c, of brown silicified
limestone, had been used as a saw until its edges were measurably
dulled. Although containing fewer fossils than the two blades described
below, it probably came from the same place.

The other three knives, plate 28, figures i-k, are remarkable for
several reasons. Part of an offering concealed in the north wall of
Kiva Q, they far excel in skill of execution all other blades known
to me from the main Pueblo area. Indeed, if worth were measured
by thinness and mastery of the art of chipping, rather than by length
alone, I doubt that their better has been found elsewhere in the United
States. The three were flaked in the same technique, and they are
undoubtedly the product of a single individual. They are vastly superior
to the other chipped implements from Pueblo Bonito, and the
materials used are foreign to Chaco Canyon.

As illustrated, the first two are of silicified, earthy limestone, dark
brown in color and containing minute fossil shells of Ostracoda. I
was hopeful these latter might suffice to identify the source of the
rock but they do not. The ostracod is a microscopic creature that
lives mostly in fresh water. Limestones frequently contain fossil
Ostracoda but not all limestones are silicified. My geological and
paleontological colleagues[2] tell me the best-known deposit of silicified
limestone bearing fossils of the type represented in our two specimens
is the Maravillas chert of the Marathon Basin, near Abilene, Tex.
However, in color at least, our two blades agree more closely with
another formation, the Montoya limestone of the El Paso area. But
these formations are both Ordovician, and it is generally conceded
that the tiny shells in our specimens look much later, perhaps as late
as the Tertiary period. Even so, southwestern Texas seemed the
most likely place of origin for our two cherty knives until I chanced
to recall one from Utah.

In 1876 Dr. Edward Palmer investigated several "mounds"—presumably

the remains of P. II adobe houses—in Santa Clara Valley,
near St. George, in the extreme southwestern corner of Utah. Among
the artifacts he recovered, still carefully preserved in the U. S. National
Museum, is an unusually fine blade 10⅜ inches long. It was
figured by Wilson (1899, fig. 88, p. 896) but inadequately described.
Strangely enough, that knife is chipped in the same superior technique
as the two from Kiva Q; it is of the same mottled brown, cherty
limestone and of exactly the same thickness, three-sixteenths of an
inch. Ostracods are present, but they are small and occasional. Such
a rock might occur, I am told, in more than one Tertiary formation
on the mountaintops of southwestern Utah. The air-line distance to
Pueblo Bonito is almost the same as that from El Paso, but, as an
additional obstacle, there would be the Rio Colorado to cross.

There are other, problematical sources nearer Chaco Canyon: west
from Mount Taylor, in New Mexico, and, again, extending southward
from the Chuska Mountains, in eastern Arizona, exposures of unsilicified
limestone (Todilto formation) containing Ostracoda like ours
overlie the red Wingate sandstone. Now it is possible an intrusive
dike of igneous rock—and such dikes are present in the Chuska area—
would silicify the limestone for a short distance roundabout and thus
produce just such material as that from which our two blades were
fashioned. Since both districts lie within a couple of days' foot journey
from Pueblo Bonito, there remains the possibility that some
wandering Bonitian, or a visitor, happened upon a limited quantity of
the material and selected the blocks from which our two specimens
were chipped. However, even while grasping at this straw, we are
reminded that the quality of the chipping excels that of all other knives
in the collection if not, indeed, that of all others from the Pueblo
area in general.

Our third blade from the Kiva Q deposit is of grayish, semitranslucent
quartzite, flinty in appearance but with no distinctive characteristic.
Thus there is no likelihood of tracing it to its place of origin.
The rock is lighter in color than the Animas River quartzites, but it
permitted the same flaking technique as the two limestone blades.

In every abandoned room where floor sweepings and other debris
of occupation had been thrown we uncovered spalls of flint, jasper,
and obsidian—rejectage from the manufacturing of blades and projectile
points. Of these numerous fragments less than two dozen had
been turned to account. Four were notched like saws (fig. 36), while
the others were chipped on one or more edges to serve as scrapers or
knives. In archeological circles, flakes chipped from both sides are

identified as knives; those chipped from one side only, as scrapers.[3]

Scrapers are flakes of hard, flinty rock, chipped along one or more
edges and designed for fleshing hides, shaping wooden objects, etc.
There are two principal types, named from the area of specialization:
End scrapers and side scrapers. Both are almost worldwide in distribution;
both have been in use since the lower Paleolithic period. Thus,
by themselves, scrapers can tell very little of time or culture.

From its blunted end, the first type is often designated "snub-nosed"
or "duck-billed." It was an indispensable tool of tribes that followed

the buffalo up and down the Great Plains. End scrapers chipped from
bottle glass, collected in Nebraska about 1870, duplicate in shape and
size those of chalcedony and jasper found in Colorado deposits geologically
dated as at least 15,000 years old.

Stone scrapers of both types are surprisingly rare in the western
Pueblo country. We recovered only five during our seven seasons'
excavation. Three of these are side scrapers and, although chipped to
an edge from one side only, are thin enough to have served as knives.
The other two are end scrapers recovered, respectively, from Kiva J,
Pueblo del Arroyo (U.S.N.M. No. 334796), and the west refuse
mound at Pueblo Bonito. The second example (fig. 37) was a surface

find in 1929 by Mrs. Hilding F. Palmer, wife of the then custodian
of Chaco National Monument.

In contrast with our meager findings, Kidder (1932, p. 15) lists 185
end scrapers and 291 side scrapers from Pecos, situated on the western
margin of the buffalo country. I am not prepared to argue that the
number of chipped scrapers from a given Pueblo III ruin is any index
to contact between that settlement and Plains tribes in pre-Spanish
times, but the possibility merits archeological scrutiny.

Drills are tools for boring holes. Holes for suspension cords were
bored in beads and pendants; broken earthenware vessels were repaired
with yucca fiber threaded through drilled holes. Lacking metal,
the Bonitians made drill points of stone, chiefly flint and chalcedony.
We may have overlooked several, but even so it is strange that our

Fig. 37.—An end scraper.
(Drawn by Irvin E. Alleman.)

Pueblo Bonito collection contains only five
examples. One of these is an altered arrowhead;
another looks like an arrowpoint in
profile but is really too thick along the spine.

Broad-stemmed drills were doubtless held
between thumb and index finger and turned
gimlet-fashion, but the others were mounted
in the end of a stick to be twirled between
the palms. Examples so mounted have been
found repeatedly in Arizona and Colorado cliff dwellings.

Although steel has since replaced the stone drill points they commonly
used 60 years ago, Zuñi lapidaries still employ the pump drill
for boring holes in shell and turquoise beads (pl. 20, left). The pump
drill, like the bow drill, is a compound instrument usually associated
with northern Indians and the Eskimo. However, Martin (1934,
pp. 94-97) figures and describes a bow-drill set found in 1890 in a
cliff dwelling in Grand Gulch, southeastern Utah. After 60 years the
set remains unique for the Pueblo country.

Milling stones.—Maize cultivation was the foundation upon which
Pueblo society was erected, and milling stones were essential to the
full utilization of maize. Although wheat has come more recently to
form an important item in Pueblo diet, maize remains the favorite.
It has provided the principal food supply of all sedentary tribes dwelling
in the Southwest since Basket Maker times, and almost without
exception these diverse peoples have ground their maize meal between
two specialized milling stones. One of these, the metate (from the
Aztec metlatl), remains stationary; upon it, maize kernels are crushed
with a movable handstone, the muller or mano.

There seems but little doubt that the original concept of these primitive

Plate 24.—a, Hammerstones; b, sandstone jar covers; c, club heads.

Plate 25.—Upper: A set of sandstone abraders from Room 318. Lower: Rubbing
and smoothing tools of sandstone.

stone mills germinated in Central America or Mexico and spread
north and south with the distribution of maize. Mexican and Central
American metates, carved usually from basalt, ordinarily possess three
legs that elevate the grinding surface to a height and angle convenient
for a kneeling woman. They can be moved about the house at will and
often are transported appreciable distances. Pueblo metates, on the
other hand, are commonly of sandstone and always legless. In their
earliest known form they lay flat upon the floor while in use; later the
end at which the miller knelt was often propped up a few inches for
comfort while grinding. Still later, perhaps during the first half of
the eleventh century, a housewife here and there fixed her mill permanently
in position, at an angle of 20° to 30°, and walled it about
with sandstone slabs on edge. Out of this occasional practice grew the
Pueblo custom of arranging binned metates of varying texture side
by side in series of two, three, or more. Three provide a satisfactory
sequence and is the number most frequently employed today. The
first, or coarsest, may be of vesicular lava; the others, of medium- and
fine-grained sandstone. Maize crushed upon the first is passed to the
next for grinding and then to the third, where it is reduced to the
desired degree of fineness (pl. 29, lower).

The efficiency of these multiple milling stones, and the young women
who operated them, greatly impressed Coronado during his first few
days among the Zuñi. From Hawikuh he wrote the viceroy on August
3, 1540: "They have the very best arrangement and machinery for
grinding that was ever seen. One of these Indian women here will
grind as much as four of the Mexicans" (Winship, 1896, p. 559).

In Tigua villages, according to Castañeda (ibid., p. 522), maize was
ground on three stones in a room that was set aside for the purpose
and which the women were at pains to keep clean. They even removed
their moccasins and covered their hair before entering. At one of the
towns our chronicler looked in upon a grinding party preparing cornmeal
for some ceremony—a gay party where the girls sang in rhythm
with their grinding while a man sat at the door and played a flute
accompaniment.

We do not know precisely where or when the compound milling bin
originated, but we have evidence of at least two in Pueblo Bonito.
Both were in houses of third-period construction; both had been dismantled.
The first series, which included 10 metate bins and occupied
almost the entire middle length of Room 90, has been described by
Pepper (1920, pp. 295-296). Slabs on edge had framed each mill and
its accompanying basin into which the ground meal fell. In each case
the meal basin had been paved with sandstone slabs; in each case this

flooring lay 2 to 3 inches below the forward edge of the metate slope.
Three metates, two of which clearly had fallen from the room above,
were found upon or near the bins; one of the three is described as
"flat."

Our second example appeared in Room 291, a dwelling with central
fireplace. Here two adjoining meal basins, flag-paved 4 inches below
the room floor, indicated the former presence of as many stone mills.
The first basin, 16 inches wide by 21 inches long, abutted the northeast
wall less than 4 feet from the north corner; the second basin, in the
same axis as the first, measured 12 by 16 inches. Their respective
lengths, 21 inches and 16 inches, approximate the widths of the two
metates that once sloped upward from the basins toward the northwest
end of the house. Both mills had left concave imprints, and since the
first is perceptibly higher than the second we infer the metate that
made it was thinner and broader than its companion. A slab fragment
on edge had supported the forward end of the second mill and marked
the near side of its associated basin. Both bins had been dismantled
when their metates were removed; we detected no evidence of former
enclosing slabs at their upper or raised ends (pl. 29, upper).

In line with the two described above and against the southwest wall,
a slab on end marks the back of a third meal basin, 11 by 19 inches.
Between it and the room's west corner are the remains of two more,
likewise slab-paved, upon the original room floor 4 inches below the
second and final one. Because this latter was much broken, metate
seatings here are not so clearly indicated as in the two cases first cited.
Nevertheless it seems certain that when Room 291 was inhabited it
boasted five binned metates, in banks of two and three, respectively.
These and their enclosing slabs were removed for use elsewhere when
the dwelling was abandoned; subsequently, and characteristically,
nearby residents utilized the empty room as a convenient receptacle
for household rubbish. Of 1,023 potsherds tabulated from this debris,
5.4 percent represent the four principal varieties of Old Bonitian
pottery; 71 percent, as many Late Bonitian wares.

Adjoining 291 on the northeast is Room 72, a narrow closet built
to utilize otherwise waste space when Kiva 75 replaced 76. In Room
72 the Hyde Expedition found 20 metates, including several unfinished
ones, leaning against the walls or fallen flat upon the floor.[4] Next
beyond 72 is Room 20, which adjoins 90, the milling room to which we
have already referred. The doorways connecting these four had all

been blocked, presumably because first-story Rooms 20 and 90 were
no longer suitable as living quarters after Kiva 75 was constructed in
front of them. If the time of that construction was A.D. 1061, the
cutting date of a beam that carried the south wall of Rooms 290-291
across the arc of Kiva L, then Room 90 probably was built 15 or 20
years earlier. Its 10 slab-walled milling bins may have been installed
at the same time or a decade later.

In Old Bonitian dwellings we found no binned metate; no special
milling room. Here, as throughout the village generally, the daily
grinding appears to have been done on single, casually placed mills.
These were all of the troughed variety; that is, the upper surface bore
a longitudinal groove or trough in which the mano moved to grind the
meal. That groove was closed at the elevated end, where the operator
knelt, and open at the lower end.

All Bonitian metates are troughed, but minor differences separate
them into two principal groups. One group is thin, tabular, and symmetrical
as a rule, with wide margins to the shallow grinding area
(pl. 30, left); the second, at least 3 inches thick, is more or less massive
in appearance (pl. 30, right). Both groups include mills finished
with little or no change in the original block of sandstone except the
mano groove and others reduced to the desired size and shape by much
spalling and rubbing. We brought to Washington for the national
collections only one example of each kind, but my choice for the
second type is not quite a proper one since its closed end had been
battered away and the trough extended full length—the lone example
of its kind at Pueblo Bonito. Pittings left by the stone hammer suggest
this change probably took place when the mill was last resurfaced.

It is well known that Pueblo milling stones must be "sharpened"
from time to time in order to maintain their cutting properties. Just
how frequently is the one factor in question. Bartlett (1933, p. 4)
says Hopi matrons of a generation ago roughened their grinding
stones every 5 days. At such a rate, and with corn to be crushed and
powdered daily, deep troughs would soon develop even in the thickest,
toughest mill. By the same token, those of the tabular variety would
last a matter of months only, rather than years.

Because all Bonitian metates are troughed, I did not recognize soon
enough the possibility of a cultural lag. And I have not yet found a
satisfactory adjective to differentiate between the two groups. In the
field we referred to the first as "tabular" but were never able to improve
upon "thick-troughed" for the second. "Massive" would have
fitted a majority but not all. Tabularity is perhaps the most tangible
point of distinction. We regard as "tabular" those metates made from

laminate sandstone split along its cleavage lines into slabs averaging
about 2 inches thick and retaining a border of 3 to 6 or more inches
on three sides of the mano trough. All others are "massive" even
though they bulk less than tabular mills.

Of 87 unbroken metates exposed during our investigations at Pueblo
Bonito, 53 were found in rooms of third- and fourth-type masonry,
and approximately 80 percent of these were of the thicker variety.
Many had been discarded, but others clearly had fallen from secondstory
dwellings. Twenty-five came from Old Bonitian Rooms 296,
306, 307, 307-I, 323, and 326, of which the last four had degenerated
into dump grounds. Fifteen of this number belong to our "massive"
group, three are "tabular," and seven remain unclassified. Where
mills are reported in my excavation notes, the type, unfortunately, is
not always indicated. None of those we uncovered was propped up
on stones or otherwise fixed in position.

We have no record of a local mill with over-all grinding surface
requiring a muller as long as, or longer than, the metate's width. But
such a one was found in Room 5, Pueblo del Arroyo—a foreign, flatfaced
metate 8 inches wide by 19 inches long, neatly set in adobe in a
slab-walled bin 17 inches wide.

Pepper (1920, p. 90) describes from Room 20 fragments of a
tabular metate with a scroll design pecked on its broad margin. We
found nothing comparable, but we did observe several interesting
examples of re-use. For instance, pieces of thin metates were frequently
incorporated in the slab lining of fireplaces; like fragments
helped line some of the seven storage bins on the original floor of
Room 307. A perfectly good tabular mill 25 inches long, 21 inches
wide, and about 2 inches thick was inverted to provide a new sill for
the reconstructed south door of Room 227. Another, trough up and
8 inches from the north wall, was embedded in the floor of Room
300B to seal the hatchway connecting with the closet below. Part of
a thick-troughed metate was utilized as a step for the east door in Old
Bonitian Room 320 (pl. 92, lower). Others were found in the fill of
Kivas F and L; another, more ponderous example blocked the stepped
passage leading down into Room 273. A large tabular mill lay face
down on the floor of Kiva V; a smaller one of the same kind was
recovered from the sandy accumulation in Kiva W.

Since mills of each type were found in both early and late dwellings,
how may we know which belonged primarily to the older inhabitants;
which to the later? We have the evidence presented by lesser ruins
throughout the Chaco region and the testimony of coworkers elsewhere.
Only "massive" metates were uncovered during our study of

nearby small-house sites wherein architecture and ceramics closely
agree with those in the later portions of Pueblo Bonito; only "tabular"
mills were present in Pueblo I pit dwellings shortly antedating the
oldest section of our famous ruin (Judd, 1924a, pp. 402, 411; unpublished
N.G.S. data). At a Late Basket Maker site 9 miles east of
Pueblo Bonito the typical milling stone was tabular, but, unlike ours,
it generally remained untrimmed around the edges (Roberts, 1929,
pp. 132-133). Where no possibility of intrusion exists, therefore, we
find only the one type of metate associated with the earlier Chaco
Canyon habitations; the other, with the latest known structures. Both
Morris and Roberts report comparatively thin, troughed metates the
characteristic form at Early Pueblo villages in southwestern Colorado
(Morris, 1919b, p. 200; Roberts, 1930, p. 148). These extramural
observations thus strengthen our conviction that the thin, tabular,
open-troughed mill of Pueblo Bonito was a cultural trait of the older,
more conservative element in the community. More recently, Bartlett
(1933, p. 26) and Dutton (1938, p. 67), without distinguishing between
"thick" and "thin" examples, trace troughed metates from B.M.
III to P. III times and place the troughless, full-width-grindingsurface
variety (their "flat slab" type) from P. III to modern villages.
Five troughless mills were found in Leyit Kin, a small-house Chaco
ruin described as predominantly P. II. Brew (1946, p. 147) reports
three metates of the same type, each in its slab-walled bin, from a
P. II ruin on Alkali Ridge, southeastern Utah.

Thick or thin, Bonitian metates are made of sandstone, the one
readily available rock in Chaco Canyon. For the most part, and irrespective
of type, they are of a size one person could carry, but in the
rubbish of Room 251 we found five troughed mills each of which
weighed at least 150 pounds. They were massive and difficult to move.
Two other, even more ponderous examples, one with three and the
other with four mano channels, appear among those from Room 17,
as figured and described by Pepper.[5] Such unwieldy blocks necessarily
rested flat upon the floor when in use.

The manos, or handstones, employed in conjunction with Bonitian
metates were commonly used on one side only (pl. 27, e-g). Of the 12
specimens brought to Washington only one, an East Court surface
find, is triangular in cross section as a result of wear on three sides.
My field notes include no reference to others of like form among the
424 mullers we unearthed but left at the ruin.

Through friction, the grinding surfaces of each pair of milling
stones soon came to coincide, and as the metate trough deepened the
mano naturally continued in negative agreement. Thus, manos used
on our "massive" metates are generally shorter and with a more pronounced
longitudinal convexity than those intended for the shallow,
tabular mills of the Old Bonitians. Also, Late mullers are often thinner
along one edge while those employed on tabular metates are flat-faced
and with but little curvature at the ends.

When new the rectangular mano blocks were often 2 or 3 inches
thick, with cupped finger grips on the front and rear edges as a convenience
in handling. They were discarded only when worn too thin
for grasping with the fingers. In an emergency a muller, like almost
every other object, could meet a need for which it was not primarily
designed. So we find occasional mullers stained all over from the
grinding of red ocher; others that had been pressed into service as
palettes for red, green, or yellow paint.

Like fragments of tabular metates, manos now and then found their
way into house construction as building stones and as lining for fireplaces
and storage pits. We could detect no reasonable purpose, however,
for the 10-inch mano embedded on edge in the floor of Room
316 with 1½ inches exposed, paralleling the northeast wall at a distance
of 3½ feet and standing 2 feet 5 inches from the northwest wall.

The metate illustrated on plate 26, A, probably was not designed for
household use. It retains the hammerstone bruises that first delimited
its mano channel; its sides and edges have been carefully smoothed.
Unearthed in the court west of Room 165, it closely resembles one
figured by Pepper (1920, p. 60, fig. 18, b) as of possible ceremonial
use. Its intended function may, indeed, have been preparation of the

cornmeal (in which bits of shell and turquoise are ground) offered in
prayer on the occasion of every Pueblo ritual, although today such
meal is prepared by the women of the household on ordinary milling
stones.

That this specimen represents a local type is indicated by the fact
that we found fragments of several others during the course of our
investigations. The rectangular depression at its upper end is reminiscent
of the larger, cruder "Utah type" metate (Judd, 1926, p. 145)
with its shallow basin from which meal presumably was advanced for
further grinding. The feature is unusual on milling stones from
Arizona and New Mexico.

Mortars and pestles, indispensable utensils among the acorn-eating
tribes of California, were rarely used in Pueblo kitchens. At Pueblo
Bonito we recovered only one specimen that even resembles a mortar,
and it is merely half a sandstone concretion hollowed out and smoothed
around the rim (U.S.N.M. No. 335923). Ours was a surface find,
but Pepper (1920) describes two comparable examples from Rooms
10 and 38; a third, "made of an irregularly shaped piece of sandstone,"
from Room 27, and a barrel-shaped, elaborately painted sandstone
mortar from Room 80.