ARCHEOLOGICAL RESEARCHES IN ARGENTINA AND BOLIVIA. 575 



As already mentioned, in the majority of cases articles had l)een 

 deposited in the o^raves'with the dead bodies; as a rule these arti- 

 cles consisted of a bowl, some corncobs, and a cup, which at the 

 time of the burial was probably filled with Avater, as is the custom to 

 this day amono- the Chorotes Indians. Some graves, however, were 

 more plentifully supplied with similar articles, as small cups of 

 burnt clay, clay bottles with painted ornamentation, a small red 

 clay bottle of a beautiful shape and of a fine material, a clay bowl 

 with a handle in the shape of an animal's head. At the bottom 

 of this bowl there is a black cross, painted, and with arms of equal 

 size. Some corncobs were found in the bowl. In one grave two cups 

 of exactly the same size and appearance were found, cut out of one 

 piece of a hard kind of wood (pi. ix, fig. 8) ; the exterior is richly 

 adorned with engraved ornaments. The discovery so far from the 

 sea of some shells of marine mussels, probably used as spoons, is 

 remarkable. In these graves were further found a bone case 

 containing cactus prickles, used doubtless in tattooing, as is still 

 the case among the Cliorotes; an instrument flattened like a spoon 

 at one end; some of the so-called llama l)its. It is possible that the 

 objects in question were actually used for that purjiose, but if so 

 I presume that they were not placed in the animal's mouth, l:)ut 

 across its nose, for I have not been able to discover any trace of 

 Avear by the teeth on any of the numerous specimens I have come 

 across. On one of the *' bits '' of the same description there is a 

 rein of llama wool fastened to it. 



Outside most of the grave grottoes I found that the sand for a 

 somewhat limited area around was mingled with splinters of pottery, 

 pieces of chipped stone, bones of animals, charcoal, etc. These 

 collections of remnants of a bygone civilization each extended over 

 an area of at the utmost 15 square meters; in places they were as 

 much as one-half meter in depth. That dwelling places and graves 

 were found so close together goes to show that the custom preva- 

 lent, for instance, among the Chiriguano Indians of burying the 

 dead near their residences was general in this portion of th" Puna, 

 too. In the collections s})()ken of above I came u[)()n some clay 

 vessels of rather larger size than the generality. Besides splinters 

 of pottery, chipped stone, charcoal, corncobs, aiul sundry bones of 

 llamas, etc., I also found there arrow and lance lieads, axes, spindle 

 whorls, stone beads, etc. The axes or parts of axes discovered there 

 were made of schist and were all of approximately the same type. 

 One of tlie axes is about 15 millimeters thick and the edge lias been 

 sharj^ened on one side. Some of the other axes found there, how- 

 ever, had their edges sharpened on both sides. Ajnbrosetti and 

 Lehmann-Nitsche describe im[)lements of an exactly similar char- 

 acter, but tlijey do not seem to have found any trace of the axes 



