de Laguna] ARCHEOLOGY, YAKUT AT BAY AREA, ALASKA 91 



head. The only exception is one specimen from Diya^na'Et which 

 now lacks a groove, but which appears to have been refinished for 

 further use after the original butt was broken. The other blade from 

 Diyaguna'Et and the single specimen from Old Town I have only 

 a single lashing groove, while heads from Old Town II and III have 

 two to four grooves, and often, in addition, two or three knobs or 

 ridges to hold the lashings. The butts of four specimens, representing 

 aU parts of the site, have been narrowed by grinding or chipping to 

 form a crest or axlike blade at the butt. Ahnost every specimen 

 has been damaged at cutting edge or rear end, and some have even 

 been split in two, by hard usage 



A number of the broken specimens were reshaped for further use. 

 Thus, two blades (pi. 5, b, d) found cached under a grinding slab in 

 the fill of House Pit 1 had been freshly sharpened, although the butt 

 end of one was broken off. A fragment (pi. 5, h) from Old Town III 

 is chipped and battered along one edge and across the ends as if it 

 had been partially reshaped as a planing adz blade. A broken off 

 fore-end (pi. 5, g) from Old Town III had been used as a hammer, or 

 possibly as a wedge. A similar fragment, found in Subsm-face Pit 14 

 in Old Town II, may also have been reworked. In addition, two 

 pieces of greenstone from Old Town II may have been fragments of 

 splitting adzes. One has been reground as if for a planing adz, but 

 is unfinished; the other has been partially shaped as a miniature ax. 



The signs of re-use on these specimens suggest that the owners were 

 loath to discard even the fragments of splitting adzes. This accords 

 with the statement made by an informant that the owner would feel 

 so badly if one were broken that he might kiU a slave! Adzes 

 were traditionally made of greenstone imported from Icy Bay. This 

 rock, like the fine-grained shale or siltstone used for whetstones, had 

 to be taken by stealth, "stolen from the glacier," or else a gift was 

 left in order to ward off a dangerous storm. Furthermore, magical 

 restrictions were observed to prevent the adz from breaking. Thus, 

 men should start to chop in the early dawn before the raven calls, 

 and their wives should not eat until the men had finished their work. 

 These were precautions observed for all dangerous or supernaturally 

 risky undertakings. 



The Yakutat splitting adzes probably represent what Drucker 

 (1943, p. 45) has termed type III (with narrow axlike butt) and 

 type VI (long, slender, with rectangular cross section and grooves near 

 the butt end). Our specimens are, however, characterized especially 

 by the various combinations of ridges and grooves to hold the 

 lashings. Although similar arrangements are occasionally encountered 

 on the Northwest Coast (Niblack, 1890, pi. xx, fig. 79, d; de Laguna, 

 1960, pi. 5, a, 6), most adzes from this area have only a single groove. 



