39 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



The State Museum has four specimens from the Hudson valley in 

 the vicinity of Catskill. The two specimens shown in plate 120 are 

 from the Thompson collection and came from sites near Hudson. 

 The upper figure shows a perforation. The outside of the bowl near 

 the rim has a series of incised patterns resembling bird tracks 

 encircling it. It is not likely that these objects were used for 

 drinking cups for they have little capacity. They rather suggest 

 having been used for paint or medicine mortars. 



Cups or dippers were sometimes made from large sea shells 

 from which the columellae had been cut. Some of these have been 

 found on Neuter sites in Western New York. 



Cupstones. The term cupstone is applied to certain types of stones 

 having one or more pits pecked or drilled on one surface. Usually 

 these pits or depressions are concave, well made and nearly uniform 

 in size. Certain specimens show a secondary drilling at the bottom 

 of the depression. In a majority of instances cupstones are made 

 from sandstone or other gritty rock. 



No known use may be safely ascribed to them though they have 

 some times been called nut stones or paint mortars, both probably 

 erroneous as descriptive terms. A better theory would be that the 

 depressions were used for rounding the ends of wooden knobs, for 

 certainly nearly all cupstones are made of some abrasive rock. 



Discoid implements of stone and clay. Implements and orna- 

 ments of this kind have mostly been found in the Iroquois area. Thin 

 segments of slate were worked by the Iroquois as discoidal beads. 

 Other specimens show no perforation and may have been used in 

 games. Some are perforated as pendants. In the Iroquois areas 

 in Jefferson county numerous disks of pottery are found evidently 

 worked as game disks. The Iroquois still have games where similar 

 dice are used. Plate 121 illustrates various discoidal articles, all 

 except number 3 being from Jefferson county. The unperforated 

 disk comes from Plattsburg. 



Disks, perforated. These vary from roughly chipped disks of 

 sandstone or slate to carefully finished biconcaves. The rougher 

 forms are larger and the holes seem to be picked into the central part 

 of the object from either side until the septum broke through. 

 Rougher forms have been found about Hemlock lake and one 

 broken specimen, originally polished, came from the Owasco Lake 

 site. Discoidal beads of soft stone have been found in certain 



