658 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 



I 

 A PERFORATED TABLET OF STONE FROM NEW YORK. 



By William Wallace Tooker, Sag Harhor, N. Y. 



In every considerable collection of aboriginal antiquities can be seen 

 those thin, perforated tablets of stone, commonly called gorgets, twine- 

 twisters, pendants, or whatever else the theory or fancy of different 

 writers or collectors have bestowed upon them.* 



These fanciful titles are mostly conjectures, for it is a recognized fact 

 that no one yet knows the aboriginal use of these tablets with any de- 

 gree of certainty.t Those with one to five perforations are all given the 

 same name or put into the same class, without regard to the fact that 

 those with more than two perforations of a recognized form wei^e used 

 for a different purpose and should be classed differently. 



We do not call drills arrow-points, nor grooved axes celts, because 

 they have the same kind of points or blades. 



So it ought to be with the different forms of these perforated tablets. 

 To those ^j-ith one perforation perhaps belong the name of pendant, hav- 

 ing been used for personal adornment, but as the greater number of 

 those with two perforations bear no marks of having been worn sus- 

 pended by a string, may be called twine-twisters or anything else that 

 theory may invent but cannot prove. As the writer of this brief article 

 does not care at present to theorize in regard to the uses of the tablets 

 with one or two perforations we will leave those out Of the subject and 

 proceed to explain the object of this essay. 



The tablets with four perforations similar to one already figured and 

 described as a gorget by a well-known writer on this subject, | (who 

 does not say whether the specimen bears any cord marks or not, prob- 

 ably not,) belong to another class, and were no doubt used for an entirely 

 different purpose. 



It is one of these tablets in my possession that I intend to describe 

 and to prove, as I have already done to the satisfaction of all who have 

 seen it, that it is neither a gorget, twine-twister, totem, or pendant, but 

 something that I have never seen mentioned in any work bearing on 

 the subject that has been accessible to me. 



That something is nothing more nor less than a puzzle, a plaything 

 made to amuse some young savage, or jierhapsanolder one,asweknow 

 they are easily amused. 



This tablet, of which figures 1 and 2 show the obverse and reverse, is 

 made of slate with the usual countersunk perforations common to all 

 perforated tablets, andis marked onits edge with twenty-four tally orrec- 

 ord marks. These have become nearly obliterated by time and weather. 

 This tablet was found on Montauk Point, New York, and must have been 



* Joues. Antiquities of the Southern Indians. 



tRau. Smithsonian Contributions, No. 287, 1876, page 33. 



X Abbott. Primitive Industry, Fig. 361, 1881. 



