64 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 177 
Typical stone artifacts of the Alaka Phase are crude, percussion- 
made tools showing little shaping except at the working point or edge 
and no secondary retouching. Most commonly employed rocks are 
andesite and micaceous schist, with occasional use of quartz, gneiss, 
and concretions of limonite and hematite. Characteristic percussion- 
made core tools include choppers, hammerstones (sometimes with a 
slightly pecked groove for hafting), and large picks. Blades, small 
picks, and scrapers were percussion-made from flakes. The majority 
of these tools are probably employed in food gathering and prepara- 
tion. Except for a few rubbing stones, implements showing abrasion 
in manufacture or use are restricted to the late part of the Phase. 
They consist principally of celts, mortars, pestles, manos, and metates, 
all of which suggest the introduction of a new subsistence resource, 
probably agriculture. 
The sequence of Alaka Phase sites is based on the presence or ab- 
sence of pottery, and the pottery types represented. Pottery is ab- 
sent at the early part of the Phase, labeled “preceramic.” This period 
is followed by a transitional, “incipient ceramic” period, characterized 
by a few sherds identified as trade and the beginnings of pottery mak- 
ing by the Alaka Phase in the form of a very crude, shell-tempered 
ware given the name of Wanaina Plain. In the third period, “Ma- 
baruma Phase contact,” Wanaina Plain increases greatly in abundance 
and is associated with plain and decorated pottery types of Mabaruma 
Phase origin. 
There is no means as yet of dating the inception of the Alaka 
Phase in the Northwest District, or its duration as a preceramic cul- 
ture. The diffusion and adoption of pottery making and probably 
also agriculture seems to have preceded the arrival of the Mabaruma 
Phase and perhaps stemmed from.a different source. Strong Maba- 
ruma Phase contact in the late Alaka Phase sites suggests that the 
Phase ultimately succumbed to domination and probably assimilation 
by the immigrants. 
