﻿FEWKES] PORTO RICAN STONE COLLARS !"5 



Collars are said to have been found in caves, bul thus Ear we have 

 no reliable information on this point, and no one has yet recorded 

 an account of their association with other aboriginal objects in such 

 places. 1 have fully investigated many of the stories regarding the 

 cave origin of these collars, but have found them always to be based 

 on hearsay. A reliable man at Ponce informed me that he had seen 

 two of these collars in a cave and that they were lying side by side 

 and luted to the floor. Between them, according to his account, 

 there was a tripointed stone, and hack of them was a low, artificial 

 banquette. 1 have not myself found collars in caves, hut the per- 

 sistency of testimony that they occur in such places, as well as the 

 fact that caverns were formerly places of worship, is evidence that 

 these objects sometimes occur therein. Porto Rican shell-heaps, oi 

 which several have been explored, have thus far failed to yield a 

 specimen of stone collar. These objects are generally plowed up 

 in the fields or are brought to light by chance excavation in unex- 

 pected places. 1 



The technique of both the collars and the tripointed stones is 

 among the best known to the student of aboriginal American stone 

 art, and it is remarkable that man was able to cut and polish hard 

 stone so skilfully without the aid of iron implements. In both types 

 there are some specimens the surfaces of which are almost as smooth 

 as glass; Avhile on the other hand many are roughly made, showing 

 signs of the instrument used in pecking. Evidences of erosion are 

 found on the surfaces of several, some of the most common of which 

 are made of a kind of breccia in which the harder, angular, enclosed 

 fragments stand out in relief from the eroded softer matrix. The 

 surface in several specimens is decorated with incised geometrical 

 figures. 



There are indications that the tripointed stones were sometimes var- 

 nished or covered with a gum or resin similar to that found on wooden 

 idols, while the surfaces of others, as that of a bird-shaped, tripointed 

 stone in the .AJuseoArqueologico in Madrid, retains traces of pigment. 

 Although as a rule the surfaces of the tripointed stones are plane. 

 one or two of them bear small, superficial, wart-shaped prominences, 

 evidently intentionally made, and with considerable skill. Several 

 specimens have surface pits or shallow depressions the significance of 

 which is not apparent. These are generally two in number, one on 

 each side, and in a few cases two on each side; others have four 

 such depressions, two on the sides and two on the anterior and pos- 



1 While I was in Ponce, Porto Rico, in April, 1904. a plowman turned 

 up one of these objects in a cane-field on the outskirts of the city. 



