pip. ?fo^ 2^4T* ^HEEP ISLAND — OSBORNE, BRYAN, CRABTREB 289 



complete disagreement with this and feel that the tools were used in 

 digging. They are not at all the types that one can visualize as having 

 been used in fine carpentry. Of course, no tools that fit well with our 

 present conceptions of canoe makers' adzes were found at 45-BN-55, 

 nor were the artifact series usually found at a dwelling-midden site 

 present there. It is entirely possible that the site, at least the burial 

 portion, existed before the fine jadeite, anthophyolite, and serpentine 

 adzes, or techniques of their manufacture, began to infiltrate the area 

 from the North. These fine adzes probably hark back to the wood- 

 working coast of British Columbia, or the near coast and, as has been 

 stated, are certainly later in the Plateau than our earlier finds. The 

 tools that Garth calls basalt adzes (Garth, 1952, pi. 50) are presumably 

 the objects that we call choppers. 



The heavy, often nondescript, hand tools of the varieties shown in 

 plate 53, a, /69, /56, /45a, and plates 54, and 53, &, /20 all have rough, 

 battered and/or percussion chipped edges. Possibly the digging tools 

 (pi. 53, a, /25 and /48) were large choppers rather than digging 

 tools. In any event these rough and ready tools are not rare on any 

 Colmnbia River site. They have obviously served a variety of pur- 

 poses. Often it is difficult to be sure whether or not the splintered 

 edge is the result of intentional chipping or is splintering from ham- 

 mering blows. We see these heavy tools as a wide and deep aspect of 

 Plateau culture and recognize them as worthy of intensive study, at 

 least after more data are accumulated. 



Plate 53, a, /63 and /70, are typical hanunerstones ; plates 51, 5, /18, 

 and 54 show the top, tri-pointed, of a mallet pestle. It shows evidence 

 of heat and is indubitably a cremation pil^ piece. One artifact not 

 illustrated should be mentioned. It is an amphibolite, elongate cobble 

 (36.5 cm. long by 10 cm. thick) which shows the beginning of reduction 

 to a long pestle. It is rouglily triangular in cross section, and broad 

 bands of pecking, down the corners of the triangle, illustrate the 

 method of stone working employed. 



ARTIFACTS FROM THE SURFACE 



The lower end of Sheep Island, together with the southern beach, 

 formed a moderately good hunting ground for coarse artifacts. 



Plate 53, h (exclusive of item /20) is devoted to the pieces from 

 the island surface. It is of significance that the tools from near the 

 water's edge were all net sinkers of the 2- or 4-notched varieties, or 

 were coarse, igneous-flake cutting edges. Three typical ones are 

 illustrated in plate 53, 5, /5d, /5h, /5f. Presumably the large flakes, 

 all stone pieces easily found and sharpened or otherwise prepared on 

 the beach, functioned in scaling and cleaning fish after they were 

 netted or speared. A central fragment of a fairly large obsidian 



