368 



with the qualification that "it cannot be determined with cer- 

 tainty to what use any of them were apphed; besides, it is 

 obvious that, with weapons applied to such similar uses as the 

 dart and the lance, transitionary types must necessarily arise" ^). 

 Practically all of them have in the median of the butt three, two, 

 or one, line-holes pierced through them. These heads are fol- 

 lowed by a series of lances without lateral barbs. It is only the 

 last of these in his series, inv. Pfaff no. 169 from the Egedes- 

 minde district in West Greenland, which need interest us here. 

 It is somewhat larger (29"7 cm) and more clumsy than inv. 

 Amd. 17, from which it differs also by being without a slit 

 for the blade, but it has, like the latter, at the fore end a 

 head-like expansion tapering away in front and thus producing 

 a fairly blunt tip; and it has no line-hole. It has no lateral 

 barb, but resembles inv. Amd. 17 in having its butt pointed 

 and provided all the way round with irregular indentations to 

 hold it fast in the socket in the shaft into which it is intended 

 to fit. Swenander suggests that it (as well as the foregoing 

 number in Inv, Pfaff, which has a line-hole) either must have 

 been used as a lance-head, fitted in the kappout (the small 

 lance), or else as a bird-dart. Inv. Amd. 17, as I have already 

 remarked, might be thought to have been used as a bird-dart. 

 Another, though less probable, supposition is that this 

 bone head may have been used as a salmon spear, for fishing 

 on the ice^); cf. Nelson (Alaska) ^). In the Gjøa collection at 

 Christiania there are some fish-spears (nos. 16002—16006) from 

 King William Land with heads of reindeer horn and shafts 

 of wood. The heads, which have pointed butts and lateral 

 barbs, are detachable, being fastened to the wooden shaft in 



^) Swenander 27. 



^) At Amnnassalik salmon is cought in the summer in rivers, with a three- 

 pronged pitch-fork, during the winter through holes in the ice with a 

 harpoon (Holm). 



=4 Nelson PI. 67 and 68. 



