ART. 11 PREHISTORIC PIT HOUSE VILLAGE SITE KRIEGER 11 



certain amount of flattening of the occiput due to contact of the 

 plastic infant skull with the uncovered cradle-board. One of the 

 more pronounced artificially deformed skulls found at Wahluke was 

 from an uncremated burial, although some of the cremated skulls 

 uncovered are quite similar to those of the modern brachycephalic or 

 broad-headed Shahaptian tribes, all of which have a certain amount 

 of occipital flattening but not of the anterior part of the skull. 



One lesion of a pathologic nature in the skeletal material recovered 

 at Wahluke was noted. This is a fusion of a lower right tibia and 

 fibula, due probably to traumatic origin and occurring probably in 

 sub adult life. Skulls obtained from a cemetery at Vantage Ferry, 

 in Kittitas County, Wash., and from other burial sites farther north 

 which were accompanied by ceremonial burial offerings of a distinctly 

 Hudson's Bay Co. derivation were in every instance similar to those 

 occurring in the prehistoric burials at Wahluke. 



Burial offerings found among the burned charcoal and charred 

 bones of the cremation burials at Wahluke were useful and decorative 

 objects constituting the personal belongings of the deceased. Some 

 of the larger pieces, such as hollowed stone bowls and long, polished 

 stone pestles, were intentionally broken or "killed." Just one deco- 

 rated stone bowl was recovered. It is a beautifully symmetrical, pol- 

 ished granitic piece, uniformly hollowed by pecking and crumbling 

 with hammerstones and polished with pumice. A surface design in 

 the form of repeated V-shape bas-relief figures made by pecking and 

 grinding encircles the outer circumference. Paint cups and mortar 

 bowls of stone are for the most part crudely hollowed out, although 

 showing evidence of constant use. Paint cups still contained frag- 

 ments of red and yellow ochers but no trace of a green or other col- 

 ored paint. A green stain covered the surface of elk teeth and 

 certain shell objects. This condition was caused by the penetration 

 of copper salts from near-by copper pendants and beads and was not 

 an intentional paint. A paint cup of Haliotis rujescens shell filled 

 with red ocher used as paint was found. Most of the paint contain- 

 ers exhumed along the Columbia are of granitic stone or of worked 

 pumice. 



There were no wooden dishes or bowls at Wahluke. A large, flat, 

 circular granitic mortar was picked up at the center of one of the pit- 

 house ruins, at the location of the primitive hearth, as evidenced by 

 the accompanying charred cooking stones of fractured red quartz and 

 charcoal. 



Pottery was neither made by the ancient occupants of Wahluke nor 

 was its use known to them. The lack of a suitable friable potter's clay 

 may account for this lack in part, but, as in the case of definitely 

 developed culture complexes elsewhere, it is impossible always to 

 explain the absence or presence of pottery, agriculture, and the loom 



