Hoyme and Bass] SKELETAL REMAINS 381 



cording to mammalogists, the width, depth, iiosition and direction of 

 the scratches rule out this possibility. According to ornithologists, 

 bird beaks do not leave such marks on the bone. INIalacologists ruled 

 out snails; and fish, reptiles, amphibians and insects seem unlikely- 

 agents. Damage by human agency is, therefore, the only possibility 

 remaining. Chance damage, during excavation, seemed milikely for 

 several reasons : The grooves, less than a millimeter wide, are too deep, 

 narrow and short to liave been made by anything but the point of a 

 knife ; they are usually multiple, crisscrossing each other ; occasionally 

 penetrating the bone, but rarely resulting in a break ; and they appear 

 most frequently on the shafts of the larger limb bones, rather than 

 at random. In short, they are not the sort of marks left by an archeo- 

 logist's tools. Fortunately the bones had not been cleaned very care- 

 fully in the laboratory, and dirt still filling the holes and scratches 

 confirmed the impression, given by soil staining elsewhere, that the 

 cuts were old. 



These incised markings appeared sporadically on the long bones 

 of about one-third of the preserved skeletons from the Tollifero site. 

 They were usually shallow, small, and infrequent — one, two, or three 

 on a single bone, and usually on only the shafts of the larger bones 

 of the skeleton. Occasionally they would appear on the pelvic side 

 of one of the innominates, and, as m the case which attracted atten- 

 tion to this phenomenon, they were fomid on the inner surface of the 

 skull. All of this suggested the bones had been marked before burial. 



In the examination of the Clarksville skeletons, similar markings 

 were seen on the bones. Yet there was a clear difference, for these 

 markings were deeper, many more were found on each bone, many 

 more bones, including hand and foot bones (pi. 108) in each body, 

 were so marked, and virtually every skeleton in the collection had been 

 treated in this fashion. In addition, new phenomena, almost cer- 

 tainly associated with these pits, appeared. In addition to the pits 

 already described, there were short, shiny, parallel scratches of the 

 sort made by repeated hacking with a knife blade; deeper pits which 

 perforated to the marrow (pi. 106, <?, d^ e) ; rounded indentations, 

 often ending in shallow, meandering grooves, apparently gouged by 

 a blunt point (pi. 109, a) ; and denuded streaks 2 cm. or more wide, 

 which look as if the periosteum had been pulled off, taking with 

 it some of the underlying bony surface (pi. 109, 5, 6). Finally, 

 there were patterns of damage to the articulated skeleton that could 

 only be interpreted as signs of cutting off strips of flesh, taking the 

 underlying bone as well (pis. 109, (?, d; 110) . Had the latter skeletons 

 been among the first examined, the surface damage just described 

 would undoubtedly have been dismissed without further thought, or 



