436 SOME ABORIGINAL SITES. 
Harvard University, does not consider the suggestion offered by us in regard 
to the use of the needles and sizers ean be the correct one from the fact that he 
believes a bobbin or a shuttle, similar to those now in use for net-making, was 
known to primitive peoples and probably to the inhabitants of “The Indian 
Knoll." 
Mr. Willoughby, who thought at first, judging from descriptions and out- 
lines, that the hooked implements might be distal ends of throwing sticks, after 
a prolonged and careful examination of the objects, now doubts if they were so 
used. 
Lest any of our readers, especially our friends in Europe and in Argentina, 
where so many of our reports are sent, unable to make a personal inspection 
of these hooked implements, might, judging only from the illustrations, con- 
sider them to have belonged to throwing sticks, it may be well to remind them 
of the following points: 
1. That the throwing stick, or positive evidence of its use,’ has not been 
found anywhere in the region? in which is “The Indian Knoll." 
2. That nearly all throwing sticks are of one piece, a construction that 
insures the required strength. 
3. That small points of antler or of flint, which might have served as tips 
of the shafts used with atlatls, were not found associated with our discoveries. 
4. That some of our hooked implements are too crooked to have been used 
on throwing sticks and that the cavities in some are too inconsiderable to have 
served for the insertion of the main part of the atlatl. | 
5. That the assumption that the hooked implements were parts of atlatls 
offers no explanation in regard to the large objects of stone and of antler found 
with the hooked implements and indubitably connected with them. 
As a further aid in this question of the former use of the hooked implements 
and the objects of stone and of antler, which we sincerely trust others may 
take up, a résumé of the association of the so-called needles and sizers found in 
“Тһе Indian Knoll” is here appended. | 
It may be well to point out, however, that when a needle was not present 
with a burial having a sizer, or when reverse conditions were encountered, there 
was usually a good reason to explain the absence of the object, namely: an 
aboriginal disturbance of the burial; a ceremonial breaking of the sizer where 
fragments of it were found but where probably parts of the needle, broken at the 
same time, less durable, had decayed away; interment in the shell material 
1 Dr. Charles Peabody found in Coahoma County, Miss., an object referred to as of bone, having 
at one end a hook and, at the other, part of a tenon for insertion, which is described as having belonged 
to an atlatl. ‘Explorations of Mounds, Coahoma County, Mississippi," Peabody Museum Papers, 
vol. III, No. 2, Plate XX. 
2 Prof. Marshall Н. Saville writes: “І know of no examples of spear throwers outside of the Cliff 
Dwellers region and the sporadic find of Cushing at Key Marco in Florida. The Southwestern ex- 
amples, of course, show Mexican influences. I do not consider, of course, the throwing-sticks of the 
eastern Eskimos or those of the Northwest coast Indians." 
