de Lagunii] AUCHEOLOGY, YAKUT AT BAY AREA, ALASKA 179 



inside while still damp with a brown bear canine, which polished and 

 flattened the strands, making the weave watertight. A bear canine 

 (pi. 16, i), found on the floor of the Storage House, was probably used 

 for this purpose, for there is a worn facet in the enamel and both edges 

 of the root have been cut flat. 



There is nothing about the archeological basket fragments to 

 distinguish them from modern baskets of the Yakutat and other 

 northern Tlingit (cf. Niblack, 1890, pi. xxxvi). The Haida make 

 similar baskets, except that among them overlaid designs are said to 

 be recent. Decorated twined baskets are not found elsewhere on the 

 Northwest Coast until we reach the Makah (and the Nootka who have 

 recently copied them), but their baskets are rather different from those 

 of the Thngit. Twined, decorated baskets are, of course, made by 

 many southern Northwest Coast tribes, includino; the Coast Salish 

 and northwestern California groups. 



In southwestern Alaska, the Copper River Eyak, Chugach, and 

 Tanaina also made baskets of Tlingit type, similarly decorated, and 

 the Koniag made some twined baskets. The finest work was done by 

 the Aleut, although their baskets were of grass and difterent in 

 design. Twmed baskets were also made sometimes north of Bering 

 Strait (Bu-ket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, pi. 14; Birket-Smith, 

 1953, fig. 28; Osgood, 1937, pi. 10, A-C). This type of basketry has 

 a circum-Pacific distribution, while coiled baskets occur in areas 

 beyond its limits. Unfortunately, archeological specimens are too 

 seldom preserved to give clear evidence of the antiquity or sequence 

 of types in any given area. However, twined basketry with false 

 embroidery is found from southern Oregon to the Columbia, with 

 radiocarbon dates indicating an age of 9,000 years. Except for the 

 materials, it resembles Tlingit work very closely, and Cressman 

 (1960, p. 73) reports that he saw the same kind of basketry in Heizer's 

 collections from Kodiak. Fragments of rather coarse, open twmed 

 baskets, as well as of coiled baskets, were found in the Platinum 

 Village site in Bristol Bay (Larsen, 1950, fig. 57, 1-4)- This site 

 seems to be older than others in the area with pottery, and the material 

 from it shows similarities to both the Near Ipiutak of Point Hope and 

 the lower levels of Kachemak Bay. All available evidence, therefore, 

 suggests great antiquity for twined baskets on the Northwest Coast. 



MATTING 



A fragment of twined grass (or shredded bark?) matting was 

 found on the floor of the Storage House. Our informants had heard 

 that shamans used such mats in their seances, but could not describe 

 them. At a still earlier period, mats were undoubtedly used for 

 ordinary domestic purposes. The weft elements of this mat are about 



