de Laguna] ARCHEOLOGY, YAKUTAT BAY AREA, ALASKA 133 



161 f.) ; for sealing among the ice floes in Disenchantment and Icy- 

 Bays they used a special type of small canoe with a heavy, spoon- 

 shaped prow armed with a projecting post to push away the ice. 



Six complete or nearly complete barbed harpoon heads were found, 

 as weU as six fragments. These bone specimens are about 11 or 12 cm. 

 long, although some now broken probably measured as much as 15 or 

 16 cm. If a barb were broken off, or if the point or tang were damaged, 

 it seems to have been the practice to smooth over the break, so that 

 the head could be used again (pi. 13, m). The proveniences of these 

 12 specimens, including the fragments, are: 3 heads and 4 fragments 

 from Old Town III (fig. 15, e, pi. 13, m), 2 heads and 2 fragments from 

 Old To\vn II (pi. 13, i-l), and 1 head (fig. 15, d, d') from Old Town 

 I. The last and oldest specimen is interesting in that the single re- 

 maining barb is hollowed out on the undersurface. This peculiar 

 feature is represented on three heads from the younger prehistoric 

 period on Prince William Sound and is encountered occasionally on 

 Kodiak and Aleut specimens, but seems to be relatively late in south- 

 western Alaska (de Laguna, 1956, pi. 33, 9, 16, p. 165). It is also 

 found on two specimens illustrated by Drucker (1943, fig. Z,h,k) from 

 the Northwest Coast, but without specific provenience. 



Barbed tanged harpoon heads are very ancient in Aleut and Pacific 

 Eskimo culture, in contrast to other Eskimo groups among whom the 

 toggle head with socket was always more important. Tanged heads 

 are present in Kachemak Bay I, and become more common in 

 Period III than socketed harpoon heads; they outnumber the latter 

 in both lower and upper levels at Uyak Bay on Kodiak, and were used 

 almost exclusively in all known periods of Chugach culture (de 

 Laguna, 1947, p. 199; 1956, pp. 164 ff.; Birket-Smith, 1953, pp. 180 

 ff.;Heizer, 1956, pp. 57 ff.). 



AU of the detachable barbed heads from the Yakutat area, ancient 

 and modern, are of the same fundamental type, with one to fom* 

 barbs along one edge, a rounded wedge-shaped tang, and (except for 

 some harpoon arrowheads, see below) have the line hole placed asym- 

 metrically on the tang so that it is nearer the barbed edge. This is 

 the type used by the Copper River Eyak (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 

 1938, pi. 13, 1, 2, 6-7), and is the dominant style on Kachemak Bay 

 and Prince William Sound. While it also occurs in the following 



Figure IS. — Barbed heads and wooden pin. Drawn by Donald F. McGeein. a, Fragment 

 of barbed wooden arrow, from just above floor of House 9, Old Town III (No. 973); 



b, bone arrowhead for sea otter harpoon, from fill of House 8, Old Town H (No. 740); 



c, wooden pin, from Mound A, lower levels, Old Town HI (No. 387); d, barbed bone har- 

 poon head, from Mound D, upper levels. Old Town I (No. 901); d', detail of d, slightly- 

 enlarged, to show hollowed barb; e, barbed bone harpoon head, from Mound A, upper 

 levels, Old Town HI (No. 414). 



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