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SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 92 



third piece, of mottled yellow-brown chalcedony, has one end broken 

 off. It is similar to the last two and is not figured. Whether any, 

 or all, of these three artifacts had handles is not indicated by the 

 specimens themselves. There seems to be no positive way of telling 

 whether these knives were primarily of ceremonial or of utilitarian 

 significance. It is tempting to regard the finer specimens, at least, 

 as knives of sacrifice, but although this may well have been true, it 

 is not demonstrable from the evidence at hand. 



Besides the above large specimens, two smaller chipped points were 

 recovered. The larger of these (fig. 15. d) is of black obsidian and is 

 10 cm in length. The tip is broken, and the edges show evidence of 

 considerable usage and are much blunted. It was probably employed 

 as a knife. The smaller point is of felsite (fig. 15, r). It has a broken 



Fig. 15. — Chipped stone artifacts: a, b. Black Rock Basin, site i, Utila; c, d, 

 Dixon site, Roatan; c,j, Indian Hill, site i ; g, Indian Hill, site 2, Barburata. 



point, but the edges are fairly sharp and show little or no signs of 

 usage. This suggests that the artifact, which is 7 cm long, may have 

 been a dart or javelin point. 



Aside from definite artifacts, the most noticeable stone objects at 

 the site were large numbers of quartz crystals, ranging in length from 

 some 14 cm to very small pieces. None of these showed signs of work- 

 manship, but all had definitely been placed at the site as offerings. A 

 double handful was found in close proximity to the central offering. 

 As it proved very difficult to convince our guide that these were not 

 precious stones, ix)ssibly diamonds, he was presented with a consider- 

 able number of them. In addition to the one artifact already described, 

 only one small fragment of obsidian was recovered. There were some 

 irregular boulders in the deposit, l)ut these were from the limestone 

 ledges close at hand. 



