31 
BARBED BONE FISH-HOOKS 
Four bone fish-hooks, two of which are broken, and two broken barbs 
of other hooks were found. Two of these are illustrated in Plate I, figures 
31, 32. They all retain part of the marrow cavity on one side, making the 
cross-section concavo-convex. None is smoothly finished. The shanks are 
slender; the upper end of the one on the hook in figure 31 and of one that 
is not illustrated (Cat. No. VIII-F-14010b) is cut off at a slant, and that 
of another is cut off squarely. One hook has both edges of the upper end 
of the shank grooved for the attachment of a line; there are two grooves 
on the inner edge of the shaft on the hook in Plate I, figure 31; and there 
is a single groove on the inner edge and two on the outer edge of the other 
complete specimen. The hook in Plate I, figure 32, differs from the others 
found here, and elsewhere at Iroquoian sites, in having a nearly oval, 
biconical line hole through the upper extremity of the shank, 1 and the 
end of the shank is indented in line with the hole; the edges of the hole 
and indentation, however, do not show any signs of wear from the chafing 
of the line. The length of the hook or barbed part of the two complete 
specimens (figure 31 and Cat. No. VIII-F-14010b) is about two-thirds of 
the length of the shank; the tips of both hooks are sharp, and the tip of 
the barb of one is blunt and that of the other is sharp. The base of two 
of the hooks is rounded (Plate I, figure 32) and that of the one seen in 
figure 31, in the same plate, is nearly straight. 
These hooks might seem rather large for use in our inland waters, 
but they were certainly not too large when we consider the usual size of 
such fish as the garfish, pike, yellow pickerel, and common catfish, of which 
we found remains in the refuse heaps. 
A similarly barbed fish-hook was found at an early Huron site near 
Lindsay {See Boyle, 3, Figure 20), and another comes from a site in Fenelon 
township, Victoria county {See Boyle, 11, Figure 29). Two others were 
found on another Huron site, on the Essons farm, a few miles east of 
Orillia. 2 They also occur at other Iroquoian sites in Jefferson, Madison, 
and Onondaga counties, New York {See Beauchamp, 4, Plate 22; Skinner, 
4, Plate NXIV, figure e; and Parker, 6, Plate 33, figure 7). 
In addition to the completed specimens, eighteen pieces of bone show- 
ing the method of manufacture of fish-hooks were found. All of them 
retain the marrow hollow on one side and two show the cancellated struc- 
ture of the bone. Most of the blanks were separated from the stock bone 
by grooving and breaking; the rough broken ends were removed by a similar 
process. Some of them show evidences of most of the successive stages of 
manufacture. The blanks were separated from the bone either by break- 
ing, or grooving and breaking; in some cases one edge shows breaking and 
the other cutting and breaking. One end of a few blanks is left in a 
rough, broken state; in others, both ends were severed by grooving and 
breaking. The end of one of the blanks is whittled and others have one or 
both ends smoothed. What seems to have been the next step, after the 
blank was separated from the bone, was to scrape the convex surface, this 
1 The only other perforated bone fish-hook of which the writer has any record was found at the well-known 
Madisonville site, in Ohio ( See Rau, fig. 192, and Willoughby, 2, Plate 11, fig. a). 
^at. Nos. HD. 874 and HD, 1000, Roy. Ont. Mus. Archaeology, Toronto. 
23466—3} 
