Age of the Mound.

Fig. 2Fig. 2.* Skull showing lupus-like mutilation of the nose. × 1/2. [*Fig. 1 has been omitted owing to double references in the manuscript.—Editor.]

Fig. 2.* Skull showing lupus-like mutilation of the nose. × 1/2. [*Fig. 1 has been omitted owing to double references in the manuscript.—Editor.]

No. 6. Grave of a child a little over a year old, found in the tunnel in stratum VIIa, at a depth of 17 feet below the surface. It lay from north to south upon a bed of charcoal and red earth. Various ornaments and other articles were taken from this grave, all covered with red earth. A number of shell beads, both flat (cf.pl. 11, figs. 6aand 6b), and concave forms (pl. 11, figs. 5aand 5b) lay in rows from the neck down along the body, and were originally necklaces; two bored round pieces and two oblong ones (pl. 11, figs. 1 and 2) ofHaliotisshell had completed the necklace. An unusual object (pl. 11, fig. 8) found here was a flat ring three-eighths of an inch wide, three-sixteenths of an inch thick, neatly made of stone, both surfaces being decorated with a number of shell beads, originally 11 to 12 on each side, fastened with asphaltum. This object may have been a pendant, but doubtless it possessed talismanic virtues.

Shell beads like the larger convex ones ofOlivellasp. have been pictured by Holmes as objects belonging to early and modern Indians of California. Possibly they also resemble the shell coin “Kolkol” of the modern Indians, which is made ofOlivella biplicata, according to Powers, and was strung in such a manner that the beads faced each other in pairs, but are not much in use in modern times.

A shell ring of similar proportions as above, but differing through its inferior material and the absence of decoration, has also been pictured by Holmes as coming from Illinois, and as being an ear ornament presumably, while the object described above could not have served that purpose.

No. 7. Grave of a child about one year old, found in stratum VIII, about 21 feet below the surface of the mound. The body lay upon the usual bed of charcoal and of red earth and all the little bones were thickly covered with red coloring matter. The grave was as rich in artifacts as the preceding one. A number of small shell beads (as inpl. 11, fig. 6) were found near the wrist. The following objects were taken from the earth about the body:

Three oblong ornaments, bored, ofHaliotisshell (pl. 11, fig. 1), a number of very small shells ofOlivellasp. having bored ends, which fact shows that they were used as ornaments; 11 bead-like rings of bone, each being about one inch long and seven-sixteenths of an inch thick; each has a band of asphaltum in which three or four small shells were imbedded (pl. 11, figs. 10, 11). While these rings may have been mere ornaments, the following unusual object (pl. 11, fig. 9) taken from the same grave must without doubt have talismanic importance. It is a piece of quartz crystal 2-15/16 inches long and 1-1/2 inches thick, having perfect lateral edges and points; the broken base of the crystal is capped with asphaltum in which numerous small shell beads are set.

All these objects were thickly coated with red coloring matter. For the small ornamentalOlivellashells compare similar ones from Santa Rosa Island, California, pictured by Holmes (l. c., fig. 7). The bone ring resembles the thick bead-like bone ring taken from another of the graves, stratum VIIa, of the mound.

No. 8. Burial of an adult, in stratum VII, found above the tunnel. The body in the usual squatting position was placed from north to south, facing east, upon a bed of red earth and was itself colored red. This grave contained besides objects of personal adornment a number of bone implements. The former consisted of a number of beads made of bird bone (types similar to objectpl. 11, figs. 15 to 17) and a like number ofOlivellashells bored at the lower end (pl. 11, fig. 3); they were scattered in the earth about the body. One of theOlivellashells was perforated on its side (pl. 11, fig. 4). Several of the bone beads were connected in twos by thinner bones (pl. 11, fig. 15). It may be assumed that the bone beads and shells had been fastened to a garment that served as a shroud for the body but has now disappeared.

The bone implements taken from this grave have the shape of paper cutters; there are five in all, representing two distinct types. Three are made of a hard bone (pl. 8, fig. 4) and are imperfect at their upper ends; the form is that of a horn, the worn edges show their use as tools; the other two objects (pl. 8, fig. 5) are made of a much softer bone; they are unfinished at their lower ends. The two types are distinct, although it is difficult to compare them in their very imperfect condition. The upper end of the implement of the second type shows two hooked projections connected by an outward bending of their rims. They have each a hole on the lower edge of such a size as to admit a finger, to facilitate the handling of the tool. Neither of these types was met in other parts of the mound.

AnOlivellashell with side perforation similar to that ofplate 11, fig. 4, from a grave on Santa Rosa Island has been represented by Holmes[54]. Bone beads similar to that of figs. 16 and 17 onplate 11were found in nearly all the strata of the mound; two of these are shown in figs. 13 and 14 of the same plate, the former, 1-8702, from stratum IV, the latter, 1-8743, from stratum V. It also has a remnant of a former axle-like connection with another bead as was shown in fig. 15 from stratum V. Bone beads have been widely used as objects of adornment by the California Indians, as is the case with many tribes in other parts of the world[55]. With the Yokuts bird bone pieces of 2-1/2 inches in length at one time represented a value of 12-1/2 cents.

No. 9. A child’s grave, in stratum VIIa, in the tunnel about 18 feet below the surface. The associated objects were convex shell beads (cf.pl. 11, figs. 5aand 5b) and a cockleshell upon the crown of the head (cf. grave No. 1).

No. 10. Grave of an infant with very delicate bones. It was found in the lowest part of section VIII, 23 feet below the surface.

[37]See P. Schumacher, Bull.l. c., p. 38, for burials in the mounds on the Island of San Miguel.

[38]Virchow found them in the Spanish shellmounds (Ranke,l. c., II, p. 533), while in those of Denmark they are absent. Schumacher (Smiths. Rep., 1874, p. 337) states that he observed shellmounds in Southern California which had been temporary abodes only and were devoid of graves; while D. G. Brinton asserts that in Florida graves occurred in natural shellmounds, while artificial shellmounds were free of them (l. c., 1866, p. 357). Such general statements cannot be accepted unless they are supported by observations over larger fields than these.

[39]H. C. Yarrow, Introduction to the mortuary custom among the North American Indians, 1880, p. 58, points out that this custom was general among those Indians who cremated their dead.

[40]Bulletin U. S. Geol. and Geogr. Survey, III, p. 34. In other places shellmound graves lie deeper; thus sometimes three to six feet on the Island of San Miguel (P. Schumacher, Bull.l. c., p. 38).

[41]Charles Rau, Ancient Aboriginal Trade in North America, Smithson. Rep., 1872, p. 361 (from G. Squier).

[42]l. c., p. 360.

[43]Art in Shell, Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1880 to 1881, pl. XXIII, fig. 6.

[44]P. Schumacher, Smithson. Rep., 1874, p. 349.

[45]Central California, cf. also Moorehead,l. c., p. 259.

[46]P. Schumacher, Bull.l. c., p. 34.

[47]F. W. Putnam, Rep. upon U. S. Geogr. Surveys,l. c., p. 30; Schumacher, Smithson. Rep., 1874, p. 341.

[48]Smithson. Rep., 1874, p. 342.

[49]Putnam,l. c., p. 22; Schumacher, Smithson. Reports, 1874, p. 350.

[50]Yarrow, Introduction to the Study of Mortuary Customs among the North American Indians, 1880, p. 54.

[51]Schoolcraft, Archives of Aboriginal Knowledge, 1860, IV, p. 156.

[52]Yarrow,l. c., p. 71.

[53]Bulletinl. c., p. 34.

[54]Art in Shell, pl. XXXII, fig. 2.

[55]W. H. Dall, for instance, found them among other places in shellmounds on the Aleutian Islands (Smithson. Contrib., 1878, No. 318, pl. 10, No. 17261.)

The shellmounds of the environs of San Francisco Bay are almost the only witnesses of a practically unknown period in the early history of this region.[56]They appear to us at first investigation unintelligible, both as regards the beginning and the end of the period during which they served as human abodes. For a solution of the problem before us the most diverse kinds of investigations must be carried on, before the principal facts of this history can be clearly brought out.

Shellmounds can be found along almost all parts of the inhabited coast. In California as well as in other parts of the world they originate by the accumulation of remnants of food, especially the shells of the mollusca which are used as articles of diet. In the midst of the remnants of food cast aside by him, man clung to his place of abode, raising it more and more above the general level of the ground through the gradual accumulation of these materials. Hence these localities represent, in certain stages of human development, true but nevertheless low types of human dwelling places. The manner of procuring the essentials of life by collecting shells in itself indicates a low form of human existence. In all parts of the world, even today, people may be seen on the shore at low water gathering for food the shells uncovered by the retreating tide; and although under the changed conditions of life they raise no shellmounds, these people always belong to the lower classes of society, and lead in this manner a primitive as well as a simple life. Peoples depending for food upon collecting shells are usually not agriculturists, but fishermen, and perhaps hunters as a secondary occupation. Their implements are of the rudest kind, made of bone, stone, wood, and the like. Industries of a more highly developed kind,e.g., the dressing of ore and working it up into various implements, remained unknown to them, except in perhaps a few instances.

Thus it seems natural to connect the origin of shellmounds in general with the work of prehistoric generations,i.e., man of the stone age. The only condition necessary for their origin is, that the people who raised them lived somewhat close together and therefore possessed a certain social organization. For only in many centuries or even in tens of centuries could even large groups of men pile up such enormous quantities of kitchen debris into hills which come to form prominent features of the landscape. Though little is definitely known, the beginnings of human social organization evidently reached back into Quaternary time, just as is the case with the beginnings of human ornamentation. There is therefore no good reason why the origin of the shellmounds could not date back to Quaternary time. In this connection mention must be made of the fact that, according to Cook,[57]stone implements of argillite, which would consequently be attributed to the palaeolithic man, were found in a shellmound of New Jersey. The well known shellmounds of Denmark, the so-called “Kjoekkenmoeddings” (i.e., “Kitchen debris”), which first attracted the attention of scientists to the remnants left by prehistoric men, are not so old.[58]Nevertheless, it has been possible to prove by them that Denmark had at the time of their origin a flora considerably different from that of the present, and that the Auerhahn, too, lived there, which does not exist in Denmark today. J. Wyman, a very careful explorer of the shellmounds of New England, does not consider the Atlantic shellmounds of this continent as old as those of Denmark.[59]He seems to have taken this view because he met with no authentic proofs of a greater age. These were difficult to obtain. Yet he calls attention to the finding of traces of the auk, the wild turkey, and the elk in those shellmounds,i.e., animals which no longer exist in the region of shellmounds investigated by him. According to him, their disappearance took place in historic times.

In determining the age of the Emeryville mound we note first the fact that no traces of typical Quaternary animals were found in it. It is interesting to find that this mound resembles those just mentioned in regard to the finding of traces of the beaver, an animal no longer met with in this region. It was found in one of the lower strata of the mound. How far it reaches upward cannot as yet be decided, since the large number of bones taken from the upper beds have not all been examined. Since the time that remains of this animal were deposited in the lower strata of the mound, the beaver has retreated from this region, in fact from the whole of California, in a northerly direction, possibly up to Washington. When it left this region is not known. We cannot, however, be certain that this retreat may not have commenced in recent times.

Another fact of importance in fixing the age of this mound is found in the apparent change of level of the strata upon which the original layers of the mound were placed. As nearly as can be determined, the original fundament upon which the mound stands has sunk at least three feet. The base of the mound, formerly probably one foot above the usual high water level[60]of the bay, lies at present two feet below. If the mound with its environs had not since grown above the level of the original floor, it would be inundated completely for several hours twice a day. The length of time required for such a subsidence we can of course not determine with any exactness, as no measure of subsidence is available. In all probability it is to be taken an indication of considerable antiquity.

Further facts upon which an approximation of the age of the mound may be based are of a purely anthropological nature. Usually the early period in which man made use solely of flaked stone tools is contrasted with the later age when polished as well as chipped stone implements were used. In the very lowest stratum of the hill, almost down at the base, there were found stone implements of the well known palaeolithic turtle-back form. A pestle fragment which came from the lower stratum of the mound, though having a completely disintegrated exterior, seems to have originally been artificially rounded. A mortar fragment found low down may have originated from an implement which was formed, as is often the case, out of a common boulder. But before it broke from this object the mortar was deeply worn out, just as others that have come down to our times. Also, the deep concavity of its rims speaks for long continued wear. The next stratum (two to four feet above the base of the mound) yielded the fragment of a pestle of irregular, not rounded cross section. Here a common oblong pebble may have been used as a pestle. Besides these, the two lower strata furnished only an oval, flattened pebble, probably used as a hammer, the only one of its kind in the whole mound.

These four stone implements represent the only specimens of the two lowest strata of the mound which are not chipped. A little above these the excellently polished tool 1-8925 (pl. 10, fig. 9) was found (in stratum VIII). This is the only one of such workmanship before the IVth stratum upwards. Therefore it is by no means impossible that rubbed or polished stone implements, excepting mortars and pestles, were unknown at the time of the origin of the lower strata, and that their use was rather limited in the succeeding strata. But the presence of mortar fragments and pestles in the lowest strata points toward a higher development of the human type than is usually expected of men who use flaked tools only.

It will have become evident from the foregoing remarks that the general zoological, geological, and anthropological facts which are available for fixing the age of the mound offer only indefinite evidence; uncertain even for an approximate dating of the time of the mound’s beginning. They do not preclude the possibility of an age numbering many centuries; neither do they prove it. Under such circumstances it seems proper to take into account some more general considerations which appear in a study of the shellmounds of the bay as a whole.

We shall probably not make too great a mistake if we estimate the number of the larger shellmounds around the Bay of San Francisco to be over 100. So many and such enormous shellmounds can not possibly have been constructed by human hands unintentionally in any small number of centuries. Furthermore, they form a link of a larger chain of similar mounds which stretch northerly along the coast and inland from Southern California to beyond Vancouver and possibly still farther;i.e., a distance of 18 degrees of latitude. The extension of such a similar manner of life over so great an area speaks of itself for the work of a great number of centuries. Even the complete development of this peculiar mode of existence, as represented in these mounds, must have taken centuries. And this is the more probably true since in those earlier stages of cultural evolution advances in the manner of living were infinitely more difficult than they were later. Under these circumstances it is only possible to assume that the origin of the shellmounds in this region represents a historical development of more than a thousand, possibly many thousand years.[61]If this holds good generally for the origin of shellmounds among which the one at Emeryville is, judged by its height, the character of its contents in the lower strata, and the observed geological facts, by no means the youngest, we have still to consider on the other hand the limits of the time up to which these mounds may have been inhabited.

For a long time it has been customary to consider the last as well as the first occupation of the shellmounds as belonging to the remote past. The fact that in California no shellmound is known which is now inhabited or has been inhabited in historic time would speak for this assumption. However, many instances point to habitation of the mounds in the most recent times, not only in a few places, but in different parts of the whole inhabited world. And this cannot surprise us; for we can see primitive man reach into the most recent, nay, even the present time, in various parts of the globe. Thus, as is well known, the first discoverers described the Indians of the Gulf of Mexico as men “living in houses of mats erected upon hills of oysters.”[62]R. Schomburgh attributes a large number of mounds made of snail shells, observed by him near the mouth of the Orinoco river, to the Warrow Indians, who are still living in that neighborhood. In the desolate coast lands of the at present dry mouths of the Ica river in Peru there are two enormous shellmounds which the writer has visited. Even now there remain large parts of the wooden huts which were left behind on these shellmounds by the last shell-eaters. Painted pot-fragments, patches of woven fibres, and all kinds of bones lie scattered about. It would be an easy matter to show that the last inhabitants of the hill exhibited the later cultural conditions which prevailed during the time of the Incas in the valleys of Pisco and Ica, about 1460 A.D.

Returning to California, there can be no doubt that the hill-like camp places of the Indians in the interior of the country represented a local variation of the shellmounds along the shore. The form and structure of these camping places resemble the shellmounds of the coast. The material differs in part, since the inhabitants of the inland had fewer shells at their disposal. These camping places were inhabited by the Indians quite recently, or are even now inhabited.[63]The time when the shellmounds of the Bay shore were vacated by their owners was therefore probably not very long ago. With this view coincides the fact that in the upper strata of the shellmound burial is represented by cremation; a form of burial observed up to the most recent times among the Indians of California. The white immigrants settled first on the seacoast, and it is therefore natural that the aborigines retreated earlier from their shellmounds than their brethren in the interior did from their camp places.

Thus, while the history of the shellmounds of this region probably reaches back more than a thousand years into the past, it must have extended almost to the threshold of modern times. The fact that their roots reached far back into the prehistoric period of California does not prevent our seeing the tops developing almost to the present day.

[56]Powers,l. c., p. 375.

[57]Quoted by Abbott,l. c.

[58]Cf. J. Ranke, Der Mensch, II, p. 536. Those shellmounds are placed in the earlier stone age of the current geologic periods.

[59]l. c., p. 571.

[60]On an average once in every 14 days the high tide reaches a higher mark, which, however, is not considered here.

[61]In a similar manner, Abbott,l. c., p. 449, closes a long general exposition of the reasons which speak either for or against a relatively great age of the shellmounds on the Atlantic coast, with the estimate of an age of at least 1,000 years. His deductions are based upon geological reasons (the sinking of the coast) and the dissimilarities of the cultural remains found in the mounds. Peculiarly enough, D. G. Brinton, reasoning from the analogy of the cultural character of the shellmounds with that of the Indian tribes which the explorers met in this country, thinks he has found an argument against a comparatively high age of the shellmounds. W. H. Dall considers the lower strata of his well-explored Aleutian shellmounds to have an age of about 1,000 years. (Contributions,l. c., p. 53.)

[62]Abbott,l. c., p. 44.

[63]The old Indian camping place at Knight’s Landing (on the Fair Ranch), at the mouth of a tributary of the Sacramento river, was inhabited, according to authentic information (T. Coleman), as late as 1849 by 150-200 “Digger” Indians. They departed in 1865. The shells, of which only a small number have been found, are ofMytilus. A similar mound in Colusa county, 20 miles to the northwest, is still populated by Indians. The Wintun Indians are still accustomed to obtain shells for food by diving into the river. This caused Powers (l. c., p. 233) to surmise that a race somewhat like theirs might have erected these shellmounds.

If we attribute to the shellmound an age representing many centuries, cultural differences should be indicated in the successive strata. For it is impossible that the cultural state of one and the same place should have remained stationary for many centuries and, even judging by the mass alone, the mound could not have reached such a height in less than a considerable number of centuries. In attempting to discover possible cultural differences we unfortunately meet with several difficulties. The action of the climate has destroyed in all the strata the objects which consisted of perishable materials. Only the more resistant things remained. But the perishable materials are frequently those in which the decorative sense of man expresses itself most easily, and in which cultural differences are most distinctly shown. A further unfortunate circumstance arises from the general trend to simplicity and primitiveness of the tools of the inhabitants of all shellmounds. So that the visible cultural differences which would generally appear with a people of changing forms of life are imperfectly expressed. Finally, many objects give only partial evidence as regards form and use, for they were often mutilated previous to their deposition in the strata.

In examining the implements of successive layers of the mound we find that awls and certain knife-like tools found in nearly all known shellmounds are met with in all of the strata, while ornaments consisting ofHaliotisshells and other simple objects of decoration made of shells, corresponding in general appearance to those which are still in use among the Indians, are met with in the graves of the VIth to the VIIIth strata. In the deepest strata, however, there have not been found any bone beads, ornaments ofHaliotisshells, or saw-like tools such as are known above the VIIIth stratum. Thus there is some support for the suggestion that cultural differences are expressed in the history of the mound.

One of the most striking differences indicating a change in the character of the people whose cultural stages are represented in the successive strata is found in the different forms of burial. The use of cremation appears for the first time in the 4th stratum and extends to the upper, completely undisturbed stratum (II). In the IVth stratum out of 11 bone awls only 4 are calcined, while in the IInd stratum 44 in 61. In the latter the great amount of ash intermingled with calcined human bones becomes very noticeable. Powers relates in his great work on the California tribes that most of them practiced cremation, and concerning the Karok, Yurok, and Wintun he relates that they bury their dead, while the Yokuts under certain circumstances make use of both customs. The inhabitants of the upper strata of the mound may undoubtedly be assumed to have followed the customs of the majority of modern Californian tribes in the disposal of their dead. Contrasting with this custom is burial in the ground. In this connection interesting evidence is furnished by the strata of this mound: here at least cremation was preceded by interment. In strata IV to VIII of this mound we find this custom prevailing, and we are forced to assume it to have been practiced by the population living on the mound during the time from the deposition of the lower part of stratum VIII to that of the middle of stratum V. In their manner of burial the knees were drawn up, resting upon the side, resembling on the whole the mode of burial in the shellmounds of Santa Barbara county in California, and in those found in Oregon. Instead of suggesting that the mode of burial is a recent one, the findings in the lower strata of the mound at Emeryville might hint that possibly the shellmounds of Southern California and Oregon are older than is at present believed. The Yokuts likewise bury their dead with drawn up knees, but whether lying on one side is not mentioned. Also of the Wintun detailed information as regards their mode of burial is missing. But even if a majority of tribes should still practice the form which prevailed in the middle strata of the mound, this would not change the fact that the whole mode of burial at this place designates an earlier ethnical stage. The manner in which the inhabitants of the lower strata of the mound—say from the bottom portions of the VIIIth stratum to the bottom of the Xth—buried their dead is not known, because no graves or other evidences of burial appear in them. It is not impossible that their mode of burial differed again from the two kinds of burial found in the strata lying above.

Another striking difference between the upper and lower layers is found in the characteristic implements of the strata. This difference is best represented by a comparative table. In order to understand this better, we give the relative volume of earth moved for each stratum. In the table the volume of the VIIth stratum (about 100 cubic feet) has been taken as the unit. Bracketed figures in the different columns denote the number of objects which might have been expected as the proportional content of one of the middle strata. In the last two columns the contents of the IXth stratum have for practical purposes been used as a basis.

*Except mortars and pestles.

Parentheses in the 4th column denote the number of chipped stones which may actually be assumed as tools.

It is evident that the character of the objects in the upper strata is entirely different from that of the implements which are found in the lower beds. Well polished stone implements and obsidians diminish the nearer we come to the bottom. The sporadic occurrence of a well polished stone implement in the 8th stratum of the first column has an entirely abnormal aspect, in view of the otherwise complete absence of such objects from the VIth stratum downward. The abnormal increase of objects of the 1st and 2nd kinds in the IInd stratum is doubtless due to the custom of throwing their possessions into the fire during the cremation of the dead. Still, the IInd stratum yielded a sufficient number of fragments of similar objects which were evidently lost in other ways. So few are furnished by the contents of the lower strata that their limited use is apparently indicated. In fact, even the Vth stratum shares this poverty, for its four polished implements are only represented by fragments of metate-like stones and a tablet of slate, polished on one side. In the lower strata flaked stones (of local materials), bone splinters of an awl-like shape, and knife-like tools of bone predominate. Among the flaked stones, real implements are very numerous; they are missing in the upper strata. Their technique is primitive. On one side they are flat and are worked on the other side only. This working, too, is crude, and the finishing primitive. The turtle-back form is present. Different kinds of scraper-like tools of primitive form, and of drill-like sharpened stone fragments, must have been more common implements in the hands of the inhabitants of this stage than among the dwellers on the upper strata, where these tools are lacking.

A well formed implement of flaked stone, worked on both sides, was found low down in stratum VIII (a spear-like blade,pl. 10, fig. 14). Strata IX and X offer nothing similar. The leaf-like blade from stratum VIII (pl. 6, fig. 20), where a crude workmanship is paired with an attempt at more regular sharpening of the edges, does not favor the view that the inhabitants of the mound had been well versed from the beginning in the production of chipped implements.

Very remarkable is the occurrence together of crude splinters of bone, which show from long use their real value as tools, and the neat, almost elegant, knife-like implements. Among the latter we find the only ornamental fragment of a tool of bone obtained during the whole course of the excavation. The people who used the splinters of bone for their tools were not so primitive but that they possessed elegant objects of bone, and not so far advanced but that they were often satisfied with such primitive implements as common bone splinters. But both classes of these typical tools are markedly different from what the upper strata of the mound offer in the line of implements. Hence the people of the lower strata must have represented a somewhat different mental type or a different degree of mental training.

It seems advisable, from what we know, to separate the older inhabitants who had settled here and raised the foundations of the mound up to the middle part of the VIIIth stratum, from the later population of the grave period. They may have been neolithic, they may have been connected with the following generation by some common traits, although there is little evidence for this; but the two people certainly differed in cultural characteristics.

The race that commenced building in the middle of the 8th stratum was apparently less different from the population of the upper strata than from its predecessors. But differences can here, also, be discovered. The chipped tools of local materials still continue for some time (about to VIIa), and obsidian seems to have come to them as a rather rare material. Only a few bone implements from grave 8 are extant in this group of strata. Contrasted with the usage of the people of the upper strata is also the use of bone arrow blades, which the last inhabitants of the mound apparently did not possess. They had not yet departed from an extended employment of bone as a working material; a fact usually more characteristic of a primitive people than of one further advanced.

One observation should still be made in this connection. It is a striking fact that in the fifth stratum and its immediate proximity a number of objects appear, the likeness of which was not found elsewhere in the whole mound. They are:

(1) Fragments of metate-like stones, stratum V.

A long, dull, chisel-like tool of horn, from stratum V.

A tablet of slate polished on one side, stratum V.

(2) Pieces of antlers, truncated for use as tools, stratum V, and a knife-like implement, stratum V.

It seems possible that such sporadic types of tools were left by a people that only temporarily inhabited the mound. Since, however, up to the present time parallel investigations have furnished but little material, such an hypothesis cannot be tested as to its exactness; nor is it possible to state from what region they might have come.

*For the final literary form of the second half of this paper P. E. Goddard is responsible.

The artifacts, complete and fragmentary, unearthed during the excavation of the Emeryville shellmound are of stone, bone or horn, and shell.[64]In number, the objects of bone and horn about equal those of stone, or if the large quantity of chipped stone in the lower strata be deducted, being mainly workshop chips, the bone specimens are even in the majority. Although shell heaps usually abound in bone implements, the large number of such implements recovered in this mound is quite remarkable, especially since the mound at West Berkeley, only two miles distant, seems to possess a much smaller number of them. There the bone implements recovered bear the proportion of from 1:5 to 1:10 of those of stone, so in the case of bone implements we find verification of the observation regarding the less frequent occurrence of the bones of animals as waste in proportion to other waste.[65]The occupants of the West Berkeley mound being essentially fishermen, apparently gave less time to the chase, and as a result may have neglected handicrafts in which bone implements were used.[66][67]

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