de Laguna] ARCHEOLOGY, YAKUT AT BAY AREA, ALASKA 137 



arrow, although they were more commonly taken with the sealing 

 harpoon. 



The evidence would thus indicate that the sea otter harpoon arrow 

 was not kno^^Tl on the Northwest Coast in prehistoric times, but 

 that it was probably much older in southwestern Alaska and the 

 Yakutat area. 



SOCKET PIECES 



A bone socket piece was used with the harpoon arrow. It will 

 be remembered that informants described this as "a little bone ring, 

 spht in two," or as similar to the cap of a fountain pen. A cylindrical 

 piece of whalebone from Old Town II was tentatively identified by 

 one informant as a socket piece of this second type. It is broken at 

 both ends, but one is narrowed as if to provide a place for a lashing. 

 The fragment is now (5.1) cm. long, and 1.9 by 1.2 cm. in diameter. 

 Sketches of socket pieces made by different informants indicated that 

 the diameter was greater than that of the arrow shaft, but the lengths 

 were very different, so we may infer that several different styles were 

 used. These probably included types made in two parts as well as 

 in one piece. 



The finest piece of carving in the collection (see fig. 20, d) is a bone 

 object shaped like an animal's head, found in Old Town II. It is 

 7.7 cm. long, 2.2 by 1.8 cm. in diameter. The bill or mouth is open 

 and a hole has been drilled down the gullet and out the back of the 

 head. The rear end is bifurcated to form two flattened tangs, one 

 of which is broken. The other is incised with three compass-drawn 

 dots-and-circles, and the pupil of the eye is represented by the same 

 design. The head was evidently hafted onto the wedge-shaped 

 end of a shaft. 



Although the natives did not recognize the function of this piece, 

 but assumed it to have been part of a shaman's outfit, it may have 

 been the socket piece for a harpoon. The open mouth would have 

 formed the oval socket to accommodate the wedged tang of a barbed 

 head. We should note, however, that the socket piece is not used on 

 modern harpoons with barbed tanged heads, although it may have 

 been in the past. However, this specimen is not unlike in size the 

 specimen tentatively identified as part of a harpoon arrow. It may 

 indicate, therefore, that the socket piece, made in one piece with 

 bifurcated tang, was known at Yakutat. 



This type of socket piece was represented by fragments from 

 Kachemak Bay III (de Laguna, 1934, pi. 41, 13), was more common in 

 the upper than the lower levels at Uyak Bay on Kodiak (Heizer, 

 1956, p. 55, type lb), and was the dominant type throughout the 

 prehistoric periods on Prince William Sound. However, only on 



