FEWKES: A PREHISTORIC STONE MORTAR 461 



Others in form of frogs and turtles may be seen in local collec- 

 tions or figured in descriptions of Gila Valley antiquities. I 

 recall two mortars with serpentine bodies cut on their margins, 

 neither of which is as well made as the specimen above described. 

 Mortars from this region in the form of other animals are also 

 known. A mortar from the San Pedro Valley resembling a 

 horned quadruped is figured in my paper on Prehistoric Ruins of 

 the Gila Valley, 3 and there is in the Museum of the University of 

 Arizona a specimen similar to the last mentioned. Mr. Warren 

 K. Moorehead 4 figures a mortar resembling a turtle or some rep- 

 tile. In all these the depression or cavity of the mortar is situ- 

 ated on the back of the animal, whereas in the snake mortars, 

 the snake surrounds or embraces the mortar. 



It will be noticed that these specimens have a depression or 

 cavity which has led to their identification as mortars. In this 

 respect they differ from paint palettes, likewise prehistoric, found 

 in numbers in the Gila region. The stones upon which paint is 

 ordinarily ground among the Pueblos are flat, undecorated slabs, 

 without cavities, or generally only shallow depressions. Similar 

 palettes from the Gila are made with more care and their mar- 

 gins are commonly bands decorated with incised geometrical 

 designs or even, in one or two known instances, with figures of 

 snakes or other animals. They are ordinarily rectangular in 

 form, but other shapes also occur, such as circles and ovals. A 

 figure of one of these tablets or palettes in the shape of a bird 

 was obtained from Pueblo Vie jo on the Upper Gila, and pub- 

 lished in my account of Two Summers' Work in Pueblo Ruins. 5 

 A typical hitherto undescribed rectangular paint palette which 

 w T as plowed up by a farmer on the north side of the Gila, 6 miles 

 from Florence, Arizona, is show T n herewith (fig. 2). This is a 

 thin slab of rock with a marginal frame covered with incised 

 crosshatched lines recalling the conventional way of represent- 

 ing scales of a snake. This specimen, like the snake mortar, is 



3 Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Quarterly Review, 5, fig. 75a. 



4 The Stone Age in North America, 2, fig. 416. 



5 Twenty-second Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology; also 

 Preliminary Report in Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, 1896. 



