HOLMES] ABORIGINAL AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES PART I 113 



Apart from the buildings and excavated dwellings, other features 

 of the lithic art of the region, although distinctive, are in no case 

 markedly superior to corresponding features of neighboring areas. 

 Nearly all implement types are in present use or have been in recent 

 use by the tribes, and the practice of gathering and using stone im- 

 plements from the ancient sites has been so general that the old and 

 the new are not readily separable, and references. of implements or 

 other relics of art to particular tribes, ruin groups, or districts must 

 be made with caution. The mealing stones, especially the metate 

 and the muller, though plain slabs or shallow troughs, are well made, 

 and some of the numerous small mortars and pigment plates are 

 carved to represent serpents, birds, and other animal forms. The 

 carving of animal fetishes is a noteworthy feature, particularly of 

 the modern art, but the work is not of a high order of merit. At- 

 tempts at representing the human form are exceedingly crude. The 

 most ambitious sculptural effort of the region is exemplified in the 

 figures of two crouching mountain lions worked out life-size in the 

 rock in jilace near Cochiti in the Rio Grande Valley, but these figures 

 have been so mutilated that it is difficult to determine their original 

 merit as works of sculpture. 



Receptacles of stone, apart from the mealing stones and mortars, 

 are rare, their place having been taken by products of the potter's 

 art, which are abundant and of superior quality, and remarkable 

 for varied and tasteful decoration. The potter's art had reached a 

 degree of perfection not greatly surpassed elsewhere in xVmerica, 

 cei'tain groups of the ware displaj-ing grace of form and beauty of 

 decoration advanced seemingl}^ far beyond the attainments of the 

 people in other directions. 



The minor stone implements of the area correspond in grade 

 somewhat closely with those of the Middle and Eastern States and 

 the Pacific slope, but the gouge, celt, chisel, and perhaps other 

 forms are absent; while a few are peculiar to the area, as the spatu- 

 late celt and the sandal last. The grooved ax takes the most promi- 

 nent place, and in form, finish, and effectiveness as a Stone-age 

 cutting tool is rarely suii)assed. Numerous axes of exceptional inter- 

 est are quite distinct in type from the ordinary ax; these are made 

 of fibrolite, a handsome mineral of great toughness and hardness 

 Avhich is rarely found elsewhere. Implements for straightening and 

 smoothing arro^v shafts are quite numerous and exceptionally varied 

 in shape. A group of spatulate implements of jasper, resembling 

 somewhat closely the celt of the East, is of special interest. Al- 

 though it is referred to by the natives as an agricultural implement, 

 its modern use, according to Fewkes, is entirely ceremonial. In one 

 instance this explorer found 12 of these implements among the 



