28 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 191 



METATES 



A single metate and its mano were found in the Museo Nacional 

 collection (pi. 9, 6). This is a three-legged type, not uncommon 

 farther to the west. It is of a coarse badly weathered tufa, and the 

 legs have been partly broken. It should be noted that in the Madden 

 Lake area simple oval metates are common. They are usually without 

 legs and consist of a shallow depression worn in the naturally shaped 

 irregular rock without secondary reworking. None were present at 

 this site. 



It may be remarked again that there is a general paucity of stone- 

 work at Panam§, Viejo in comparison to similar sites in this region. 

 There were no chisels, drills, smoothers, polishing stones, or arrow- 

 shaft straighteners present as at Sitio Conte or Venado Beach, and 

 no carved stone objects are known to have been found. There were 

 many smooth waterworn stones distributed throughout, one weighing 

 approximately 10 pounds and roughly mano-shaped, but they in no 

 way differed from those found randomly in the creekbed nearby. 



CERAMICS 

 NATURE OF THE SAMPLE 



Because of the deranged nature of the site it was felt that accurate 

 sherd counts would not yield sufficient valid information to compen- 

 sate for the inordinate amount of time involved. In fact, a brief 

 testing of this method indicated it might yield completely false in- 

 formation unless the entire site was excavated down to sterile soil. 

 In places where the earth grader removed high spots and turned 

 around to make a new pass, there might be hundreds of burial urn 

 parts, while in the furrows a few feet away there would be scarcely any. 

 Similarly, it was evident that no stratigraphic analysis was possible. 

 Accordingly, only those sherds having decoration were collected from 

 the surface, the immediate subsurface during the investigation of 

 burials, and several random pits about the periphery of the site. 



In the burial area, almost all the sherds were from large urns but 

 with a slight admixture of both decorated and undecorated portions 

 of smaller vessels. Presumably they were from both burial offerings 

 and general debris. In the residence area there were many more 

 sherds from smaller vessels. The sherds in both areas, exclusive of 

 burial urns, were predominantly (50:1) undecorated red ware. 

 Those that were decorated in no way differed from their counter- 

 parts in the other areas. Several 2-foot squares were dug to a depth 

 of 3 feet around the periphery of the site in order to get an idea of 

 its extent. They are indicated in the site diagram (map 2). In 



