110 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 192 



William Sound, the youngest levels of which may be contemporaneous 

 with Old Town I. At Daxatkanada only about 4.4 percent of the 228 

 stone specimens were hammerstones, and at Palugvik only 4.7 percent 

 of the 444 stone artifacts (de Laguna, 1960, p. 102; 1956, pp. 110, 

 137 ff.). These differences are hard to explain, yet may reflect the 

 various uses to which hammerstones were put. 



Experiments showed that signs of wear identical with those on the 

 hammerstones and hammerstone-abraders were produced when hard 

 cobbles were used to pound and grind limestone boulders like those 

 from which most of the lamps at Old Town had been made. The 

 site yielded 34 such lamps (pis. 11 and 12), not counting 12 doubtful 

 or unfinished specimens (see pp. 117-120). Daxatkanada, how ever, 

 contained but four crude stone vessels, one of which might have been 

 a lamp, and Palugvik, though a permanent village, yielded only five 

 lamps. The great number of hammerstones and hammerstone- 

 abraders at Old Town may, therefore, be connected \\ath the manu- 

 facture of lamps. These tools may also have been used to work 

 native copper and drift iron, in which Old Town was also particularly 

 rich. 



Hammerstones undoubtedly served to shape stone tools such as 

 adzes, scrapers, and knives, and it is obvious that some were used to 

 prepare red paint. The Yakutat natives also suggested their use as 

 pestles to grind or pound native tobacco and such foods as dried 

 seaweed, half-dried fish eggs, and roots ("native potatoes"). Ham- 

 merstones were probably employed to crush the calcined shells that 

 were mixed with salmon eggs or seal brains to make a waterproof 

 paste for calking the seams of wooden boxes. Most pestles used to 

 crush and grind food are said to have been of wood. 



Pitted hammerstones are very rare in Alaska. Thus, Drucker 

 (1943, p. 50) does not mention them in his classification of Northwest 

 Coast artifacts. They are, in fact, represented by only 4 doubtful 

 specimens from Prince William Sound, 7 from Kodiak, 1 from a historic 

 site on Lake Iliamna, and by 13 pitted stones from all but the earliest 

 levels at Cattle Point on San Juan Island (de Laguna, 1956, pp. 136, 

 146; Heizer, 1956, pp. 53 f.; Townsend and Townsend, 1961, p. 45; 

 King, 1950, p. 38). These specimens may, however, have been small 

 anvils. 



ANVILS (?) 



A flat cobble from Old Town II, 14.3 by 9.6 cm. in diameter, 

 is battered on one side as if it had served as an anvU. The opposite 

 side is stained with a dark pigment (carbon?), across which are faint 

 polish lines suggesting use in mixing black paint. A similar specimen 

 from Old Town III was evidently used both as an anvil and as a 

 palette for mixing red paint. 



