112 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Boll. 192 



in such sites as Beach Grove, Marpole (Eburne), Whalen Farm II, 

 and Musqueam (with nipple top, as distinguished from the flat- 

 topped hand mauls of late prehistoric and historic times). Here 

 Borden (1950, passim; 1951, p. 45; 1962; and personal communication) 

 is incKned to interpret it as the old food pounder of the interior 

 which has been brought to the forested coast and adapted to driving 

 wedges for a heavy woodworldng industry. It should be noted that 

 the diagnostic feature distinguishing Northwest Coast pestles from 

 hand mauls is that the former have rather rounded bases, the latter 

 concave striking surfaces. On both the coast and the interior plateau 

 the range of forms is considerable, and the direction of diffusion very 

 difficult to judge (Osborne, Caldwell, Crab tree, 1956, p. 123). It 

 should be noted that the pestle or hand maul does not occur in other 

 sites in the Coast Salish area such as Cattle Point, Whalen Farm I, 

 Locarno Beach, and Point Gray, although some of these are otherwise 

 similar in contents and age to Marpole (Ebm-ne) (Borden, 1950, 

 pp. 13 f., 15 f., 20; 1962). However, neither presence nor absence 

 of such tools — nor of bone nor antler wedges, for that matter — can 

 indicate the development of woodworking skills, since among the 

 Northwest Coast Indians, the Yakutat, and the Chugach, most 

 wedges were of wood and were usually driven with boulders or wooden 

 mauls, none of which are likely to be preserved in archeological sites. 



HAFTED MAUL HEADS 



A limestone maul head (pi. 10, j), with a shallow hafting groove 

 extending three quarters of the way around the circumference, came 

 from Old Town III. It is 16.3 cm. long and 9.4 cm. in diameter at 

 the damaged poll or butt. It narrows rather abruptly to a diameter 

 of 6.5 cm. at the smooth, slightly convex striking end, which is set 

 off by a small shoulder. 



In 1949 we saw a limestone head for a hammer or maul which had 

 been found in the bed of the Situk Kiver sHghtly above the Govern- 

 ment weir and the remains of the historic village (see fig. 21, d). 

 It is about 18 cm. long, 12 cm. in diameter, and flat on the under or 

 hafting sm'face, wdth a broad groove around the convex sides and top. 

 In style it resembles the stone head from Old Town III and may also 

 represent a frog. Large oval eyes and a broad mouth are indicated 

 by shallow grooves; at the other end, flexed hind legs or haunches are 

 similarly suggested. 



Grooved stone heads for mauls or hammers have a wide distribution 

 among the Eskimo, adjacent Athabaskans, and northern Northwest 

 Coast Indians (Birket-Smith, 1953, pp. 220 ff.; Drucker, 1943, type I, 

 p. 123; 1950, Trait 426; Heizer, 1956, p. 46; de Laguna, 1947, p. 165; 

 1956, pp. 139 ff.; Townsend and Townsend, 1961, pi. 3, 5;Keithahn, 



