60 BULLETIN 14 7, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



stones. The stone celt of the ahnond or so-called petaloid variety 

 occurs m great abundance in Ciguayan shell heaps. Such celts are 

 uniformly and symmetrically ground and polished over the entire 

 surface. A similar type of polished stone celt appears in the south- 

 eastern United States. Monolithic stone axes are of rare occurrence 

 in Porto Rico and Haiti, and none were recovered by the Museum 

 expedition. They represent a translation into stone of a form of 

 hafting emploj^ed by the Taino in mounting their polished petaloid 

 stone celts with wooden handle hafts. That the typical Tainoan 

 stone celt was so hafted is evidenced by the recovery of one or two 

 examples of celt blades still retaining fragments of the wooden 

 handle. The tapered body of the stone celt had been inserted through 

 an opening cut through the bulbous basal end of a wooden handle. 

 Grooving for attachment of a haft occurs more rarely in Santo Do- 

 mingo. A few specimens illustrating this form of hafting were 

 recovered by the Museum expedition from the sites at Anadel and 

 San Juan. The European method of drilling a hole through the 

 stone celt or ax for the insertion of a wooden haft is foreign to the 

 Antillean stoneworker's technic and exists nowhere in the New World. 

 The grooved ax of the North American mainland is also foreign to 

 the island culture of the West Indian Archipelago; neither is the 

 grooved and artistically shaped and ground ax of the Carib to be 

 found anywhere along the Samana coast. 



Chipped implements are of rare occurrence. As in the north- 

 western parts of North America, grinding and crumbling take the 

 place of chipping as a shaping technic. Absence of suitable varieties 

 of stone, the use of bone projectile points, and the presence of 

 durable, easily shaped woods as weapon and projectile points account 

 in part for the almost entire lack of the art of stone chipping in the 

 Greater Antilles. 



Uses of gold and of nietdl alloys. — Metal was scarce in the 

 Antilles. Gold used by the natives was worked by them into thin 

 plates and then shaped into objects of personal adornment and into 

 amulets. Hammering of gold between two stones was developed by 

 the Taino after they had arrived in the Greater Antilles, as there 

 is no gold in the Lesser Antilles except what has been introduced 

 through the agency of primitive barter. Arawak and Carib were 

 unacquainted with tools of metal, although an alloy of gold and 

 copper " guanin " or " pale gold " had been worked into lance heads. 

 Gold appears to have been collected primarily for use in ceremonial 

 objects and to have been obtained principally in Haiti, whence it 

 was carried in trade to most of the islands of the West Indies. The 

 Lucayans informed Columbus that gold came to them from the 

 south; Cubans said that it came to them from the east; while the 

 Ciguayans of Samana Bay pointed to the eastward, to the island of 



