University of Virginia Library

STONE OBJECTS AND MINERALS

In previous chapters reference has been made repeatedly to concretions,
mineral paints, and stone artifacts that for various reasons are
thought to have been connected with ceremonial rather than secular
activities. We come now to more detailed consideration of these several
groups.

Sandstone tablets.—Four thin, patiently prepared stone tablets are

illustrated in plate 27, upper. Their over-all appearance and absence of
worn areas suggest utilization in esoteric practices and this impression
is heightened by the fact that d was an accompaniment of Burial 8,
Room 326. So, too, with a; it comes from Kiva Q and is of a creamcolored
marlaceous shale quite foreign to Chaco Canyon.

From Room 23, Pueblo del Arroyo, came five remarkable stone
tablets—remarkable for their uniform thinness (average, three-eighths
inch) and superior workmanship. All are of very fine-grained calcareous
sandstone (or siltstone); all are rectangular (average 15[fraction 1 by 16] by
8[fraction 9 by 16] inches); all were broken when the ceiling and upper walls crashed
to the floor. Two are slightly discolored by smoke and one bears the
stain of decayed twilled matting.

These Pueblo del Arroyo tablets evidence skill and boundless patience
on the part of whoever made them. (They may very well be the
work of a single individual.) They were reduced to their present form
solely through abrasion. All are polished to a degree, but exhibit no
mark offering a clue to their original use. Since those of sandstone,
especially, were too fragile for any utilitarian purpose, it may be
inferred that all were in some manner employed in ritualistic observance
of the unknown clan whose maternal home stood in the southwestern
corner of that ruin.

This conjecture is strengthened by the other unusual stone and
earthenware artifacts recovered from these same rooms. Pueblo Indians
still store the ceremonial paraphernalia peculiar to each society
in dark interior rooms of the house recognized as the ancestral home
of that society. Fewkes and others have remarked the use of painted
slabs on Hopi altars, and have described the finding of similar slabs
in prehistoric ruins. (See, for example, Fewkes, 1904, pp. 104-106;
Haury and Hargrave, 1931, p. 56; Kidder, 1932, p. 96. Morris,
1919a, pp. 23-24, describes polished slabs from Aztec Ruin quite like
those from Pueblo del Arroyo.) Of our series, however, only one
(U.S.N.M. No. 334842) bears a trace of paint and that a wash of
yellow ocher on one side.

Sandal-shaped tablets are apparently restricted in distribution to
Pueblo III ruins of the San Juan drainage. The more finely woven
sandals of that period have a broad notch, or jog, at the little toe, a
feature frequently represented on the tablets. Hence the often-quoted
theory these latter were lasts on which sandals were woven. The idea
is pure fancy, of course, since the Pueblo technique of sandal weaving
required no last.[3]

The average length of the seven sandal-shaped tablets in our Pueblo
Bonito collection is 11¼ inches. All are of relatively fine-grained
sandstone, but they vary in both texture and outline. Of those represented
on plate 81, c appears unfinished since the scars of spalling were
only partly erased. The first, a, might be classed as readily with the
narrower type of rectangular tablet as with the present series. On
one of its smooth faces red paint is still discernible. Examples b and
d only remotely resemble each other in outline and workmanship yet
both came from Room 326.

The two specimens not illustrated deserve an additional word. One
(U.S.N.M. No. 335882), 9[fraction 7 by 16] by 5⅝ inches, was flaked from a thin
leaf of standstone with no effort toward elimination of surface irregularities.
The second (No. 335895) measures 13 by 6⅛ by 1½ inches and
weighs nearly 10 pounds; marks of the hammerstone still show on its
edges but both sides have been smoothed as though from long use.
We may only wonder whether these two meant just as much to local
ritualists as did those on which infinitely more labor had been expended.

Utilization of sandal-shaped stones in Pueblo III ceremonies unknown
to us, as tcamahias and painted slabs are still employed on
Hopi altars, seems quite within reason. Convincing evidence of such
use is presented by Morris (1939, pl. 145) in his description of a
painted wood sandal form from Aztec Ruin. Transversely across the
middle back is the mark of a flat stave to which the form had been
sewn and which, presumably, supported it in a horizontal position
above the altar.

Tcamahia, according to Fewkes (1900b, p. 589; 1900c, p. 982), is
a Keresan word signifying "the Ancients" and is used by the Hopi of
Walpi not only in the invocation immediately preceding the public
portion of the Snake Ceremony but also to designate a certain type of
celt, 18 of which are among the furnishings on the Antelope Society
altar. Dorsey and Voth (1902, p. 210) state that a 10-inch jasper celt
is concealed within the bundle of eagle tail feathers known as the
tiponi, perhaps the most sacred article on the altar of the Antelope
fraternity at Mishongnovi.

Tcamahias are of interest for several reasons: (1) Those used in
Hopi rituals are not made locally but are found about prehistoric
ruins; (2) as a culture trait they are apparently restricted to ruins of
the upper San Juan drainage and to small ruins rather than the great,
compound villages of the Pueblo III period; (3) they appear to have
been designed as agricultural tools; the esoteric properties with which
they are today endowed by Hopi priests have not yet been fathomed.
It means nothing, of course, that tcamahias are usually referred to
throughout the Southwest as "skinning knives."

A few examples recovered during our explorations are described on
pages 243-246 as agricultural tools. Just when they lost their original
function and became appurtenances of religion remains unanswered,
but the change probably occurred early in Pueblo III.

At the bottom of a pot-shaped storage cist dug in the compact sand
below the floor of Room 266, we found the hematite object shown in
figure 82. Its sides are smoothly polished and the corners rounded.
Although in outline it resembles one type of tcamahia, its broader end
is only slightly beveled rather than ground to a knifelike edge. It was
not a paint stone.

Except this last doubtful example,
our tcamahias are broken or battered
through reshaping rather than by
work in rocky soil. None was found
under circumstances to connect it
indelibly with ritual. And yet, as the
symbol of an ancient warrior, the
tcamahia is deeply rooted in presentday
Pueblo ceremonialism.

Sandstone cylinders.—Three cylinders
of friable gray sandstone, 4½
inches in diameter by 4¾ inches long,
grooved about the middle and
slightly convex at the ends, were
found on the bench in Kiva J (pl.
82, figs. h-j). Two comparable but
less carefully finished specimens, f, g,
lay close together on the floor and
just west of the fireplace in Kiva G.

Fig. 82.—Celtlike object of
hematite.

Neither has been burned; one (g), rather squarish, in addition to the
encircling groove is marked by crossed lines incised on each side.

Concretionary cups.—An almost spherical sandstone concretion,
unmodified except for incipient cupping, is shown on plate 82 as
figure d. Half of a similar nodule, a surface find, was hollowed out to
form a shallow mortar, figure c, and a like fragment from Room 256
had been cupped on its convex surface as though for a pot rest (fig. e).

Small sandstone concretions, naturally hollow, are occasionally recovered
from ruins of the San Juan drainage. When the cavity has
been smoothed or enlarged and external irregularities removed, such
specimens are often described as "paint cups." None of the five in
our collection bears any trace of pigment (fig. 83).

Paints of prescribed colors in traditional patterns are required for
masks and altar paraphernalia, and for the participants, in every

important Pueblo ceremony. At other times paint gives that essential
finishing touch to the toilet; frequently it forms a protection against
insects or the blistering midsummer sun.

Red was a favorite color of the ancient Pueblos as it is of their
descendants. Red oxide, reddle, limonite, hematite—any mineral that
produced a reddish mark—was paint to the Bonitians, and they probably
knew every odd corner in their arid domain where it was to be
found. They were undoubtedly acquainted, for example, with the
small deposit under the sandstone cliff about a mile and a half south
of their deserted village—a deposit that was claimed in 1923 by a
Navaho living nearby. This mercenary individual sought to profit

from the cupidity of my Zuñi workmen, but I suspect the latter proved
the better bargainers, for I saw them return beaming to camp one
Sunday afternoon with a fat kid for their frying pan in addition to a
bag of choice ocher.

Both in Chaco Canyon and out upon the northern Arizona deserts
I have often seen Navaho women, less frequently men, with faces
painted a brilliant crimson against the reflected heat of pale yellow
sand. Mention of this custom in the National Geographic Magazine
(Judd, 1925, p. 238) brought complaint from a Pacific-coast reader
as to the inadequacy of commercial rouges and an accompanying plea
for a sample of the natural cosmetics used by my Indian neighbors.
Now I am not the one to deny a lady's prayer and so I gave her what
information I could, but I never had the courage to inquire what
damage the iron-stained clays of New Mexico did to that tender
California skin.

Our Zuñi workmen coveted almost every bit of red oxide unearthed
during the excavations. Time and again I watched unseen as one of
them spat on a handy potsherd, moistened a newly found fragment of
the mineral, and with a finger daubed forehead, cheeks, or nose. The
older men usually carried somewhere about their persons a little buckskin

bag containing a thimbleful of the red powder, for use both as a
dry rouge and as coloring matter for impromptu offerings to the
Unseen Forces.

In preparing pigments for their periodic ceremonies, Zuñi priests
employ an assortment of stone mortars and pottery cups, while a large
sherd or a slab of sandstone appears to satisfy the Hopi. Like the
latter, our Bonitian ritualists were generally content to crush and mix
their paints on any handy flat-surfaced object—a rough doorslab, a
polished sandstone tablet, a jar cover, even a metate or mano. Rarely
did they go to the trouble of making special mortars. Indeed, we
found only four during the course of our explorations and two of
these came from Pueblo del Arroyo. One of the latter, with two
squared basins half an inch deep in which red and black pigments had
been mixed, was found in Room 27 along with a number of ceremonial
objects. From the adjoining chamber, Room 23, came half a
doorslab on which yellow and red ochers had, in turn, been liquidized.

Of our two Bonito paint mortars, squarish and both from kivas, one
(U.S.N.M. No. 335921) has a secondary circular depression in the
middle of its rectangular grinding surface that indicates use of a pestle.
But our excavations brought to light only five pebbles worn at one
end like pestles and neither bears the slightest trace of paint. It
appears, therefore, that the accepted practice in Chaco Canyon was to
crush or rub bits of iron-stained minerals and other ores directly upon
the stone palette where they were mixed with water, grease, or vegetable
extracts.

Any flat-surfaced stone might be utilized as a palette. We found
paint on polished and unpolished sandstone jar covers; on half a
sandal-shaped stone, and on undressed slabs chipped about the edge
to fit doorways or ventilators. Among paint stones from Pueblo del
Arroyo are two manos and part of a third stained, respectively, with
red, green, and blue. A rectangular muller of exceedingly fine-grained
sandstone (U.S.N.M. No. 334824) is coated, except the side last used
in grinding, with what appears to be organic matter.[4]

Malachite and azurite pellets, gleaned from distant copper-bearing
formations, furnished the green and blue colors we see on baskets,
fragments of gourd vessels, and bits of wood. Two-thirds of the
pieces of hematite and limonite recovered are faceted by rubbing; one
fragment of reddle (U.S.N.M. No. 335402) is drilled through as if
for a cord. Yellow occurs along with the red oxides in deposits easily
accessible from Pueblo Bonito. The old priests searched widely for

the paints required in their ceremonials, and we may guess that the
one who brought home the chunk of sulfur (No. 335645) found in
Room 320 was mystified at his inability to make a mark with it.

Kaolin, a chalklike clay, supplied white paint for symbolic designs
and a slip for pottery. Besides a number of used pieces, we recovered
at Pueblo del Arroyo three cakes of slaked kaolin molded in a bowl—
a find reminiscent of a practice among Zuñi potters noted by Mrs.
Stevenson (see page 184).

If any difference is to be noted between the mineral paints and
paint-making methods of the Bonitians and the Zuñi of 50 years ago,
it is in the latter's greater dependence upon tools and utensils. For the
most part, any flat-surfaced rock sufficed the Bonitian and he mixed
his pigment where he ground it. In contrast, the Zuñi priest preferred
a stone mortar, generally flat and quadrangular, and perhaps a small
vessel to hold the ground paint. Col. James Stevenson (1883) includes
a number of these "paint cups" in his 1879 Zuñi collection, but very
few of them retain any trace of powdered mineral today.

Two fragments of fine-grained sandstone tablets (U.S.N.M. No.
335624) were first classified as saws, and quite understandably, since
both are knifelike on one edge, thickest (one-eighth inch) at the middle.
One (field No. 1047), from Late Bonitian debris in Room 290,
bears longitudinal striations on one side and a trace of hematite; the
second (field No. 93) boasts a brown border on each side, but within
this border one face is coated with yellow oxide and the other with red.

From Rooms 2 and 32 Pepper recovered balls of red and yellow
ocher impressed with folds of buckskin bag containers; from Room
60, a large corrugated pot in which was stored a thick layer of red
oxide and, over it, a quantity of seeds (Pepper, 1920, pp. 37, 137, 221).
In Rooms 64 and 80, respectively, he unearthed a sandstone pestle
and a mortar on which geometric designs were painted. These latter
two he considered ceremonial (ibid., pp. 237, 264).

"Medicine stones" are presumably relics of ancient shamanistic
practices. They may be highly specialized and yet definitely nonutilitarian
either because of shape or material. Fossils, unusual pebbles,
concretions having some real or fancied resemblance to animal
gods or to parts of the human body, also come within this category.
Every Pueblo theurgist includes one or more such objects in his
"medicine" kit. As fetishes, concretions are still highly prized at
Zuñi for their obvious connection with the forces of creation and
hence for their power to assist the possessor in attaining a given
objective.

I was working in a deep room at Pueblo Bonito with one of my
Zuñi assistants one day when he found a cylinder of hematite that in

size and appearance was not unlike the ubiquitous lipstick of the past
few years. After holding the specimen in his palm for several minutes
my companion volunteered the belief that such objects were employed
by the Bonitians, as by his forebears until a generation or two previously,
in hunting deer. And he went on to explain that when a Zuñi
hunter discovered a fresh track he laid upon it a hematite cylinder and
at the same time offered a silent prayer to the gods of the chase. Then,
if he were of good heart, the weight of the cylinder on the deer's track
eventually so tired the animal that it could be overtaken and killed.

This account illustrates the subtle power of medicine stones, but it
does not explain the presence of four hematite cylinders (fig. 84)
side by side at the head of a middle-aged female (Burial 8) in Room

326 (pl. 95, A). No trace of pouch or other container was noted. One
of the four is worn at one end as though for paint. Two comparable
hematite cylinders were retrieved from Late Bonitian rubbish in
Rooms 246 and 251B (U.S.N.M. Nos. 335574, 335576).

Our collection includes a number of more or less specialized objects
which, if not medicine stones, may have been utilized in some of the
recurrent rituals at Pueblo Bonito. Among these is a small series of
pointed implements the aboriginal use of which is problematical. The
first three of those illustrated in figure 85 (a-c) are of travertine, a
calcite often called "Mexican onyx"; the fourth (d), of dark limestone.
The fact that this latter, more perfectly shaped and polished
than the others, was found in Kiva G means little since the chamber
had been abandoned and utilized as a dumping place for household
rubbish by those living nearby. The tapering, butt end of a similar
object (U.S.N.M. No. 335613) was recovered from an adjacent room,
266.

In November 1929, while the three travertine specimens were lying
upon my laboratory table, Mrs. John Wetherill, of Kayenta, Ariz., well
versed in the lore of the Navaho Indians, remarked that Navaho medicine
men obtain identical material through trade from near Albuquerque,
N. Mex., and scrape from it a dust which they carry in pouches

for use in certain ceremonies. Our three pieces, however, are finished
artifacts; they show no evidence of mutilation. Calcite of this character
occurs in limestone formations at numerous places throughout the
Southwest. But there is no limestone in the Chaco Canyon region.

In her monograph on the Zuñi Indians, Mrs. Stevenson (1904,
pp. 333-334) records that "a piece of banded gypsum, 2½ or 3 inches
in length, slender, round, and tapering" is employed by the leader of
the hidden-ball game, played to the rain-making Gods of War, in

Fig. 86.—Stone "knife" and worn quartz crystal.

tracing a line of powdered medicine across
the face of each player, from ear to ear,
"to insure seeing and hearing unusual or
mysterious things and sounds." This
may, or may not, be a clue to the function
of the pointed stones above mentioned.

While clearing blown sand from secondstory
Room 6 we found on the floor close
in the northwest corner an artifact of
porphyry or andesite, planoconvex in
cross section, and a quartz crystal with
worn corners (fig. 86). From Pepper's
enumeration of the objects he recovered
in this and neighboring dwellings it is
obvious that here one of the Old Bonitian
religious societies maintained its ancestral
home, the recognized storage place for its
altar paraphernalia.

Spearhead.—Among the floor sweepings
partially filling Room 325 was a
"spearhead" made from a slab of red
friable sandstone, darkened and somewhat
polished through repeated handling (fig.
87). If not an altar piece it might have
been carried in a dance, as was the 15inch,
rudely chipped spearhead of mica
schist described and figured by Stevenson
(1883, fig. 357, p. 342).

Similar to this latter in size and crudity, but probably without ceremonial
significance, is a large spearhead-shaped sandstone slab that
lay among fallen masonry in Room 202. The piece measured 21 inches
long by 8 wide and 1¾ thick. It had been shaped by coarse flaking

along the edges but, since the tip remained unmodified, the form of
the slab as received from the quarry probably gave some indifferent
mason the idea and at least momentary respite from the monotony of
wall building.

Miscellaneous stone artifacts.—Unusual pieces are the sore thumbs
of an archeological collection. There is no taxonomic pocket into

which they can be dropped conveniently. Their very uniqueness makes
them conspicuous and tempts the finder to speculation.

Like other excavated ruins, Pueblo Bonito provided a number of
strange artifacts—nameless objects whose original purpose, if any,
remains obscure. A few have already been described as "medicine
stones" because they are plainly nonutilitarian and yet evidence use.
Among those remaining is one of fine-grained sandstone, 35 inches
long, 1[fraction 15 by 16] by 2[fraction 5 by 16] inches at one end and 1¼ by 2[fraction 1 by 16] inches at the other
(U.S.N.M. No. 335932). Its sides were first dressed with stone
hammers then smoothed by abrasion. We found it, broken in two,
among a number of household utensils fallen from the upper stories

of Room 296. What possible purpose could be served by a piece of
carefully worked sandstone a yard long and two inches square?

Fossils, concretions, and oddly shaped stones have a place on certain
altars and in certain shrines of the present-day Pueblos. Except that
they are visible ties to that distant past when the world was young and
all mankind spoke a common language with the birds and beasts, we
may not fathom the significance which still attaches to such objects.
The number Pepper exhumed in the northwestern quarter of Pueblo
Bonito is abundant evidence that the Unseen Forces governing Chaco
Canyon were much in the thoughts of the Old Bonitians.

Our own explorations, on the other hand, disclosed very few fossils
and these are all shells from the Pennsylvanian and Cretaceous formations

(identified by Drs. G. A. Cooper, curator of stratigraphic
paleontology, U. S. National Museum, and John B. Reeside, U. S.
Geological Survey, as Composita subtilita (Hall); C. trilobata Dunbar
and Conrad; Linoproductus prattenianus (N. & P.); Linoproductus
sp.; Juresania sp.; Lucina sp.; Gyrodes compressa Meek; Ostraea cf.
O. plumosa Morton; Metoicoceras whitei Hyatt; and, possibly, Pteria
nebraskana Evans and Shumard). A majority comes from reexcavated
Room 6. Two have been considerably worked: the single valve
of L. prattenianus (U.S.N.M. No. 335641) is worn flat on one side
by abrasion; the fragment of Metoicoceras (fig. 88) is faceted from
rubbing and scraping. Obviously the priest who owned this ammonite
(it was found in Kiva R) regarded its medicinal properties highly
and we may readily believe that he concocted many a potent brew
from its scrapings. Similar mystic powers were attributed to a fragment
of micaceous schist, if we correctly interpret the cutting and
scraping evident on one face (fig. 89). Sections of crinoid stems, on
the other hand, show no modification at all and neither do various
calcareous nodules, pieces of stalactitic chalcedony, etc.

Among household rubbish in Room 325 was a dark, plummetshaped
object 1 inch in diameter by 1⅞ inches long, the sandstone
image of a dried Mission fig. It is ungrooved, undrilled; appears to be
a concretion but little altered if at all.

Pellets of azurite and malachite, according to our Navaho workmen,
are to be had west of the Jemez Mountains and north of Cuba. Other
minerals—selenite, calcite, galena, iron pyrites, thin flakes of mica,
etc.—probably were gathered beyond the Jemez, somewhere east of
the Continental Divide. We recovered such fragments throughout the
ruin and invariably in piles of debris. Few have been modified and
then only in an experimental sort of way. In no instance were these
minerals grouped as though part of a medicine man's bundle. A number

of drilled or grooved malachite pellets and several bits of selenite
have been described herein as objects of personal adornment. Calcite
flakes, when worked at all, commonly exhibit but one worn edge.

Water-worn quartz pebbles half an inch wide and perhaps twice as
long undoubtedly belong in this same category. They were too small
for pottery polishers. More or less translucent flakes of calcium
carbonate could be the filler from thin veins in sandstone formations;
small botryoidal masses of jasper and chalcedony could have originated
in geodes of the La Plata Mountains and so, too, faceted pencils
of crystal quartz.

Silicified wood is usually included among the concretions, fossil
shells, and miscellaneous rocks in a modern Pueblo shrine. Our excavations
disclosed both worked and unworked pieces, the former
invariably as hammerstones. A likely source of this fossil wood is
the Bad Lands of the Ojo Alamo section, north of the Escavada.
Here, too, might be one source of our quartz and jasper pebbles.

For no particular reason we include here two fragments on which
even mineralogists fail to agree. Both were found in burned kivas.
That from Kiva D, Pueblo Bonito (pl. 70, fig. a), looks like solidified

Plate 82.—a, b, Earthenware bowl and shell trumpet from a wall niche, Kiva R; c-e,
mortars made from sandstone concretions; and f-j, cylinders of soft sandstone.

A, Wrapped pendent elements thought to have adorned some religious object.

Plate 83

B, Sandstone heads believed to represent Mountain Lion, hunter of the north.

Plate 84.—Cylindrical basket decorated with a painted design in black, orange, green,
and brown.

Plate 85.—Painted bifurcated basket from Room 320, obverse (left) and reverse.

sea foam and weighs but little more. The second (b), in two pieces,
more glassy in appearance and more vesicular, was found near the
floor on the eastern side of Kiva C, at Pueblo del Arroyo.

Both these circular subterranean chambers had been destroyed by
fire and my initial thought was that the two slaglike pieces were
products of those conflagrations. Dr. W. F. Foshag, of the U. S.
National Museum, shared this impression but Drs. C. N. Fenner and
Fred E. Wright, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, were
positive the fragments originated in some distant volcano.[5]

Pepper found pieces of like substance in Rooms 10 and 38, neither

of which had been burned. Four of those from Room 10 were shaped
like arrowpoints, or parts thereof; two were white and two dark.
Pepper's conclusion, derived from blowpipe analysis, was that the
material was of volcanic origin (Pepper, 1920, pp. 59, 191).

Plume holder (?).—Among household debris dumped through the
hatchway of Kiva L was part of an unusual object, tentatively identified
as a plume holder (fig. 90). It is of fine-grained paste, apparently
rock-tempered, meticulously stone-polished, and fired to a blue-gray

in the middle. Its base, unscarred by attrition, is both longitudinally
and transversely concave; its upper surface is correspondingly convex.
While the clay was still plastic, two holes were punched through from
the end and out the top.

At its whole end the fragment is 2¾ inches wide by 1⅛ thick. The
broken end has a width of 3[fraction 1 by 16] inches and a thickness of 1⅜. Since its
length is only 2¼ inches, the fragment clearly represents less than half
the original.

From Room 80 Pepper (1920, p. 268, fig. 111) recovered a like
object with pairs of slanting holes at both ends and one side. No
description is given.

Jeancon (1922, p. 27, pl. 19), from Pueblo I or even earlier ruins in
the Pagosa-Piedra region of southwestern Colorado, reports another
example likewise with paired holes slanting up from the two ends and
one side. But his dimensions, 5¼ inches long by 1¾ wide and [fraction 9 by 16] inch
thick, indicate a specimen with less than half the width and thickness
of ours. His is the earliest example of the type known to us.

Our fragment has been designated a possible plume holder because
of its remote resemblance to the clay pedestals on Hopi altars. These
latter support crooks and other symbolic objects. Voth (1903, pl. 3, 1)
illustrates the Flute Society emblem upheld by a semiglobular base
from which at least four feathered sticks project at angles (see also
Stephen, 1936, fig. 427, p. 791). If the paired holes in our concavoconvex
specimen likewise were designed to receive small sticks the
latter would project outward only if the specimen rested on its convex
face.

Clay ball on stick.—Among the objects unearthed in Room 326, a
burial chamber, was an unfired clay ball pierced by a rounded stick,
slightly pointed at the bottom (fig. 91, a). The ball is seven-eighths
inch high with diameters of thirteen-sixteenths and seven-eighths inch.
Its upper surface is wrinkled as though the clay, while moist, had
been wrapped in cornhusk, closely gathered and tied at the neck. A
light-brown substance that may once have covered the entire ball folds
into the upper half as a shaft lining; traces of kaolin remain in the
corrugations.

In the second specimen (b), exposed as we leveled the refill in Room
48, the pin is complete and notched at the end. It extends 1[fraction 1 by 16] inches
above but does not pierce the ball. The latter is fifteen-sixteenths inch
high with diameters of fifteen-sixteenths and 1¼ inches; its paste is
noticeably granular and includes at least three conspicuous galena
crystals. As illustrated, the ball weighs 1¼ ounces. Here, again, surface
irregularities suggest molding in a rush or cornhusk bag.