90 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 28 



material as the other vessels. There was, further, a pottery stamp with 

 a simple geometric or meander pattern; also clay balls, which Doctor 

 Sapper calls blowgun balls, but which, it is more likely, came out of 

 the hollow handles of incense spoons, and may be designated as rattle 

 stones. There were found two fragments of stone hatchets, one of 

 flint, the other of a hornblendic (piartz rock; a whetstone, a flint arrow- 

 head, v^arious small obsidian knives, a })iece of rock crystal, countless 

 fresh-water shells of tho Melania family, a land snail, fragments of 

 skeletons of birds and small mammals, among which the paca and other 

 small rodents were recognized. There were also teeth of the jabali, 

 tepescuinte, and other tusked animals, a jaguar's tooth, and noticeably, 

 also, a piece of crab's claw, and a piece of a sea urchin's shell with 

 pores. It was without doubt the wretched abode of a people who lived 

 by the chase. But I believe that there is no special reason to consider 

 it very much older than the other settlements which have become 

 known in that region. 



A second cave in this region, which was searched by Doctor Sapper, 

 is that of Ceamay. Fragments of a large thin-walled vessel were found 

 there, the exterior of which was decorated with a sort of mat-braid 

 pattern scratched in line lines. 



The tinds of Chiatzam seem also to have a peculiar character. Besides 

 a beautiful lance point of flint and a fine obsidian knife, 25 cm. in length 

 and 3 cm. in breadth, the Sapper collection contains fragments of stone 

 jugs, which seem to have had two small handles on the circumference, 

 with a boss between them, and which are decorated at the base of the 

 neck with a double row of small grooved circles. Further, there are 

 worth}^ of notice thick coarse fragments, with deeply scratched ser- 

 pentine lines which form definite figures, and also thick potsherds dec- 

 orated in very deep lines with symbols and hieroglyphs, almost like 

 certain vessels from Tabasco which were placed in the Trocadero 

 Museum by M. Charna3^ A pottery head from Chiatzam will be dis- 

 cussed below. 



From the central parts of the Qu'ekchi territor}', the district of 

 Coban, Zamac, San Pedro Carcha, and San Juan Chamelco, the Royal 

 Museum possesses, partly in the Sai'g and partly in the Sapper collec- 

 tion, a large number of pottery objects and fragments, mostly small, 

 as well as some stone objects. 



In his contributions to the ethnography of the Republic of Guate- 

 mala'* Doctor Sapper calls attention to the diflerence in the form of 

 the millstones for grinding maize used in the difl'erent parts of Guate- 

 mala. While in the highlands they use clumsy millstones and heavy 

 cylindric hand rollers projecting on each side beyond the edge of the 

 millstone and held at the ends (manufactured about Santa Catalina, not 

 far from Quetzaltenango), there were used in Peten, in Vera Paz, and 



a Petermann's Geographische Mittheilungen, 1893, p. 12. 



