168 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 65 
and Cliff-dweller products. It is safe to state on the basis of our ex- 
plorations that even if the ring basket was used by the Basket 
Makers on the southern side of the San Juan, it was very much 
less. common than among the Cliff-dwellers, for no Cliff-dweller col- 
lection, as large as our Basket Maker one would fail to contain the 
fragments of several dozen specimens of this type. 
COILED BASKETRY 
The relative frequency of coiled basketry in Cliff-dweller and 
Basket Maker sites is best illustrated by the following statistics: 
our Cliff-dwelling collection contains in round numbers 1,100 speci- 
mens, of which four are of basketry; 580 specimens are catalogued 
from the three Basket Maker caves, and of these about 175 are 
basketry. Owing to decay at Sayodneechee and to looting in Cave 
I, the majority of our specimens are fragmentary; we have, however, 
a few whole baskets and large pieces to help us in our study of forms, 
while the quantities of shreds and worn-out bits from the débris of 
occupancy and the plundered cists are particularly useful for techno- 
logical details. 
Weave.—With the exception of one very crude example (pl. 76, a) 
in which a single rod is used, every piece in the collection is made 
over a two-rod-and-bundle foundation. The rods, varying in thick- 
ness according to the fineness of the product, are thin, round twigs 
with pithy centers;! the bundles consist of fibers, usually from the 
yucea leaf, more rarely of what appears to be some sort of shredded 
root; the sewing elements are thin wooden splints (except in the 
very rough piece referred to above, where they are yucca leaf). Sev- 
eral bunches of these splints prepared for use were found buried in 
Cave I (pl. 75, a-d); the individual elements are from three thirty- 
seconds to one-eighth inch wide, and vary from 12 to 16 inches long. 
Three of the bunches contain both light- and dark-colored splints; 
one (pl. 75, ¢) is composed entirely of dark ones. 
As is shown in figure 80, the two rods are set side by side and the 
fibrous bundle is laid above them. The sewing element, in inclosing 
this foundation, takes in the rods and the bundle above them, and 
also passes through about half of the bundle of the coil below (fig. 
80,4). It is this gripping of the bundle of the lower coil which alone 
holds the fabric together. While careless manipulation of the awl 
has sometimes caused the sewing elements to split each other (pl. 
76, #), they do not, so far as we can discover, ever interlock. Mason’s* 
1We have not yet been able to have made the botanical identification of the rods 
and splints. 
21904, p. 244. 
