134 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 192 



adjacent regions, the most popular forms on Kodiak, the Aleutians, 

 and Bristol Bay are bilaterally barbed with a shouldered, unpierced 

 tang (de Laguna, 1956, p. 269). 



Heads of the Yakutat style are like Drucker's types IV and V and 

 plain type II (Drucker, 1943, fig. 3, g, n, m, pp. 36 ff.). The shorter 

 heads (types II and IV) are especially characteristic of the Thngit, 

 although they are also found among the Haida and Tsimshian. The 

 longer, "simple unspecialized form" (type V) is recorded from the 

 Tlingit, Tsimshian, and sites in the Coast Salish area. The historic 

 Tlingit of Daxatkanada near Angoon evidently relied heavily upon 

 the tanged harpoon head, most of which were probably rather short 

 (de Laguna, 1960, p. 112, pi. 8, /i-n, probably d-g). On the southern 

 Northwest Coast, however, most detachable barbed heads have a 

 pair of projections above the tang that serve as guards to hold the 

 line (Drucker's type I). Such heads are characteristic of Point 

 Gray and Marpole (Eburne), and Borden (1950, pp. 14, 18; 1951, 

 p. 45; 1962) believes that they are among the elements derived from 

 the interior and has hazarded that the coastal sites where they occur 

 are probably more recent than those with only one-piece and two- 

 piece socketed heads. (Recent radiocarbon dates may have modified 

 this last interpretation; cf. Borden, 1962.) Certainly a specimen 

 from Locarno Beach I (Borden, 1951, pi. i, 5) appears from the photo- 

 graph to be a detachable barbed head without line hole or guards. 

 The line could have been tied to it, as we believe was the case with 

 some Yakutat harpoon arrowheads (see below), and with a few har- 

 poon heads from Kodiak (Heizer, 1956, pi. 56, c, e, i). Osborne, 

 Caldwell, and Crabtree (1956, pp. 118 f.) have questioned the inland 

 derivation of the tanged harpoon head, in view of its wide and ancient 

 occurrence in both inland and coastal sites, pointing out that the 

 origin of the line guard (which, incidentally, is ancient in Laughlin's 

 site at Nikolski on the Aleutians) should be considered apart from 

 the origin of the general type of barbed, tanged harpoon head as a 

 whole. Although the sequence of barbed and socketed harpoon 

 heads on the southern Northwest Coast is still puzzling, the detachable 

 barbed head in this area need not be attributed specifically to the 

 interior, in view of its great antiquity in southwestern Alaska, and 

 it is probably very old also on the northern Northwest Coast. It 

 can be described as "Eskimoid" with as great justice as can the 

 socketed toggle harpoon heads. In fact, the lateral line guards 

 characteristic of southern British Columbia barbed heads are rather 

 similar to the shoulders on the most common type of head on Kodiak, 

 the Aleutians, and Bristol Bay. These devices for holding the line 

 may be related or parallel developments and it may be premature to 

 postulate which areas yield the most ancient examples. 



