366 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



Bone beads are particularly numerous on Iroquois sites and 

 literally hundreds have been found. The Museum has more than 

 three hundred from the Richmond Mills site, Ontario county. 



Bird stones. A certain class of polished slate and other stone 

 objects, having in general a barlike body with an expanded and 

 upward flaring tail and a neck projecting upward supporting a 

 forward-pointing head, and having a perforated base. Occasionally 

 there is only a neck and head rising from an ellipsoidal base. The 

 body of the bar bodied bird stone is perforated diagonally from each 

 end downward into the base. Certain forms have knoblike pro- 

 jections from the head to resemble eyes. Some bases are slightly 

 curved inward and some have ridgelike transverse bars, as if they 

 had fitted into slots. 



Bird stones are usually made from banded slate or other attractive 

 stone, but many other stones were used. Some specimens are made 

 of hard rock. But of whatever material they are formed, all show 

 careful workmanship and evidence that they were much esteemed. 

 All finished specimens show a high polish. 



Bird stones show much variation from the average bird form. 

 They range from this, backward to simple bars with arched backs ; 

 and forward to specimens having either high, long necks and ex- 

 tended beaks or wide-flaring tails, or both these features. Some 

 bird stones resemble floating ducks, other swimming beavers, but 

 of whatever form they may be, all except the simple bars seem to 

 resemble aquatic creatures. 



Bird stones are found throughout New York State wherever there 

 is evidence of the Algonkian or the 'mound occupation. None is 

 found on Iroquoian sites. 1 The greater number have been found in 

 the counties of Chautauqua, Cattaraugus, Erie, Ontario, Livingston, 

 Yates, Cayuga, Seneca, Onondaga, Jefferson, Clinton, Warren, Sara- 

 toga, Montgomery. Some have been found along the upper waters 

 of the Susquehanna and the Delaware. The area in which they are 

 found is not large, few being found west of the Mississippi, except 

 perhaps in eastern Missouri, just west of the mouth of the Ohio, 

 few south of northern Alabama, and few east of the Appalachian 

 range. For forms of bird stones, see plate 113. 



Consult Moorehead, Stone Ornaments ; Wilson, Prehistoric Art 

 (National Mus. 1896) ; Beauchamp, Polished Stone (N. Y. State 

 Mus. Bui. 18). 



Possible uses. There is no known use of bird stones. The 

 article suggests that ,it was fastened to some other object by means of 



1 Except intrusively. 



