120 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 192 



The unshaped lamps are simply limestone cobbles with a hollow 

 pecked into one surface. The natural shapes of stones selected are 

 roughly circular, ovoid, rectangular, and triangular (pis. 11, c, 12, 

 c, e, f). Only a few have been slightly worked on the outside to 

 produce a more regular shape. Most of these crude lamps tilt slightly 

 to one side or one end, suggesting that the wick was placed at the 

 lowest point of the rim, although they lack a wick lip. One specimen, 

 with incrustations of carbon indicating its use as a lamp, is a naturally 

 hollow stone, so poorly balanced that it must have been propped up 

 to prevent the oil from leaking out of the end. 



These lamps may be subdivided into two groups on the basis of 

 size: 12 large lamps with a maximum diameter from about 14 to 20 

 cm., and 13 smaller lamps with a maximum diameter from about 

 8 to 11.5 cm., although no sharp distinction can be made. The 

 depressions in these lamps vary from 0.5 to 2 cm. in depth. Possibly 

 the shallowest ones are unfinished, or the walls of the lamps may 

 have weathered down. Some of the smaller specimens may have 

 been toys. 



There are also 12 limestone cobbles, 7.3 to 11.7 cm. in diameter, 

 with pecked depressions on one face that are clearly too small or too 

 shallow to have been serviceable as oU reservoirs. These may well 

 be unfinished lamps. 



The proveniences of these unshaped and unfinished lamps are: 

 11 large, 7 small, 9 unfinished from Old Town III; 1 large, 4 small, 

 1 unfinished from Old Town II; 2 small and 2 unfinished from Old 

 Town I. 



Lastly, fom- small limestone cobbles, only 5.1 to 6.1 cm. in diameter, 

 with depressions 0.3 to 0.5 cm. deep, pecked in one face, may be 

 toy lamps (pi. 12, a, b, d). They resemble the larger specimens 

 identified as crude lamps. Two are from Old Town III, and one each 

 from Old Town II and I. Our informants said that little girls used 

 to play with toy lamps. These were described as clamshells filled 

 with oil and actually lit. These four specimens were probably too 

 small for such realistic use, although they may have been toys, as 

 were perhaps some of the small crude lamps with very shallow 

 reservoirs. 



Stone lamps seem to be more numerous at Old Town in proportion 

 to other artifacts than at any other site in the Pacific Northwest. 

 This is probably due to the ease of working limestone cobbles, even 

 though we may have been mistaken in our identification of some 

 of the specimens. The crude cobblestone lamps of Old Town corre- 

 spond perfectly to Abercrombie's description of lamps he saw among 

 the Copper River Eyak in 1884, even though our Eyak informants 

 said that lamps were of clamshells (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 



