Cultural Stages Represented.
If we attribute to the shellmound an age representing many centuries, cultural differences should be indicated in the successive strata. For it is impossible that the cultural state of one and the same place should have remained stationary for many centuries and, even judging by the mass alone, the mound could not have reached such a height in less than a considerable number of centuries. In attempting to discover possible cultural differences we unfortunately meet with several difficulties. The action of the climate has destroyed in all the strata the objects which consisted of perishable materials. Only the more resistant things remained. But the perishable materials are frequently those in which the decorative sense of man expresses itself most easily, and in which cultural differences are most distinctly shown. A further unfortunate circumstance arises from the general trend to simplicity and primitiveness of the tools of the inhabitants of all shellmounds. So that the visible cultural differences which would generally appear with a people of changing forms of life are imperfectly expressed. Finally, many objects give only partial evidence as regards form and use, for they were often mutilated previous to their deposition in the strata.
In examining the implements of successive layers of the mound we find that awls and certain knife-like tools found in nearly all known shellmounds are met with in all of the strata, while ornaments consisting of Haliotis shells and other simple objects of decoration made of shells, corresponding in general appearance to those which are still in use among the Indians, are met with in the graves of the VIth to the VIIIth strata. In the deepest strata, however, there have not been found any bone beads, ornaments of Haliotis shells, or saw-like tools such as are known above the VIIIth stratum. Thus there is some support for the suggestion that cultural differences are expressed in the history of the mound.
One of the most striking differences indicating a change in the character of the people whose cultural stages are represented in the successive strata is found in the different forms of burial. The use of cremation appears for the first time in the 4th stratum and extends to the upper, completely undisturbed stratum (II). In the IVth stratum out of 11 bone awls only 4 are calcined, while in the IInd stratum 44 in 61. In the latter the great amount of ash intermingled with calcined human bones becomes very noticeable. Powers relates in his great work on the California tribes that most of them practiced cremation, and concerning the Karok, Yurok, and Wintun he relates that they bury their dead, while the Yokuts under certain circumstances make use of both customs. The inhabitants of the upper strata of the mound may undoubtedly be assumed to have followed the customs of the majority of modern Californian tribes in the disposal of their dead. Contrasting with this custom is burial in the ground. In this connection interesting evidence is furnished by the strata of this mound: here at least cremation was preceded by interment. In strata IV to VIII of this mound we find this custom prevailing, and we are forced to assume it to have been practiced by the population living on the mound during the time from the deposition of the lower part of stratum VIII to that of the middle of stratum V. In their manner of burial the knees were drawn up, resting upon the side, resembling on the whole the mode of burial in the shellmounds of Santa Barbara county in California, and in those found in Oregon. Instead of suggesting that the mode of burial is a recent one, the findings in the lower strata of the mound at Emeryville might hint that possibly the shellmounds of Southern California and Oregon are older than is at present believed. The Yokuts likewise bury their dead with drawn up knees, but whether lying on one side is not mentioned. Also of the Wintun detailed information as regards their mode of burial is missing. But even if a majority of tribes should still practice the form which prevailed in the middle strata of the mound, this would not change the fact that the whole mode of burial at this place designates an earlier ethnical stage. The manner in which the inhabitants of the lower strata of the mound—say from the bottom portions of the VIIIth stratum to the bottom of the Xth—buried their dead is not known, because no graves or other evidences of burial appear in them. It is not impossible that their mode of burial differed again from the two kinds of burial found in the strata lying above.
Another striking difference between the upper and lower layers is found in the characteristic implements of the strata. This difference is best represented by a comparative table. In order to understand this better, we give the relative volume of earth moved for each stratum. In the table the volume of the VIIth stratum (about 100 cubic feet) has been taken as the unit. Bracketed figures in the different columns denote the number of objects which might have been expected as the proportional content of one of the middle strata. In the last two columns the contents of the IXth stratum have for practical purposes been used as a basis.
| Rubbed* | Flaked stone | Rough | ||||
| Relative | stone | implements | Knife-like | awl-like | ||
| Layers | Contents | implements | Obsidians | excepting obsidian | implements | implements |
| I | 5.5 | 2[5] | 2[2] | — | [6] | —[8] | ||
| II | 10.6 | 24[10] | 11[5] | 6[10] | [13] | —[16] | ||
| III | 7.3 | 3[7] | 4[4] | 4[7] | [9] | —[11] | ||
| IV | 4.2 | 4 | 2 | 4 | [5] | —[6] | ||
| V | 3.4 | 4[4] | 1[1] | 5(2) | [4] | —[5] | ||
| VI | 1.5 | —[1] | —[1] | 3 | [1] | —[2] | ||
| VII | 1 | —[1] | 2[1] | 6 | } | [1] | —[1] | |
| *VII | 2.2 | —[2] | —[-] | 9 | } | 1[2] | } | [11] |
| VIII | 7.4 | 1[7] | 1[4] | 24 | }28 | 1[9] | }5 | —[3] |
| IX | 3.3 | —[3] | 1[2] | 62 | } | 4[4] | 5[5] | |
| X | 1.8 | —[2] | —[1] | 17 | } | —[2] | 4[3] |
*Except mortars and pestles.
Parentheses in the 4th column denote the number of chipped stones which may actually be assumed as tools.
It is evident that the character of the objects in the upper strata is entirely different from that of the implements which are found in the lower beds. Well polished stone implements and obsidians diminish the nearer we come to the bottom. The sporadic occurrence of a well polished stone implement in the 8th stratum of the first column has an entirely abnormal aspect, in view of the otherwise complete absence of such objects from the VIth stratum downward. The abnormal increase of objects of the 1st and 2nd kinds in the IInd stratum is doubtless due to the custom of throwing their possessions into the fire during the cremation of the dead. Still, the IInd stratum yielded a sufficient number of fragments of similar objects which were evidently lost in other ways. So few are furnished by the contents of the lower strata that their limited use is apparently indicated. In fact, even the Vth stratum shares this poverty, for its four polished implements are only represented by fragments of metate-like stones and a tablet of slate, polished on one side. In the lower strata flaked stones (of local materials), bone splinters of an awl-like shape, and knife-like tools of bone predominate. Among the flaked stones, real implements are very numerous; they are missing in the upper strata. Their technique is primitive. On one side they are flat and are worked on the other side only. This working, too, is crude, and the finishing primitive. The turtle-back form is present. Different kinds of scraper-like tools of primitive form, and of drill-like sharpened stone fragments, must have been more common implements in the hands of the inhabitants of this stage than among the dwellers on the upper strata, where these tools are lacking.
A well formed implement of flaked stone, worked on both sides, was found low down in stratum VIII (a spear-like blade, [pl. 10], fig. 14). Strata IX and X offer nothing similar. The leaf-like blade from stratum VIII ([pl. 6], fig. 20), where a crude workmanship is paired with an attempt at more regular sharpening of the edges, does not favor the view that the inhabitants of the mound had been well versed from the beginning in the production of chipped implements.
Very remarkable is the occurrence together of crude splinters of bone, which show from long use their real value as tools, and the neat, almost elegant, knife-like implements. Among the latter we find the only ornamental fragment of a tool of bone obtained during the whole course of the excavation. The people who used the splinters of bone for their tools were not so primitive but that they possessed elegant objects of bone, and not so far advanced but that they were often satisfied with such primitive implements as common bone splinters. But both classes of these typical tools are markedly different from what the upper strata of the mound offer in the line of implements. Hence the people of the lower strata must have represented a somewhat different mental type or a different degree of mental training.
It seems advisable, from what we know, to separate the older inhabitants who had settled here and raised the foundations of the mound up to the middle part of the VIIIth stratum, from the later population of the grave period. They may have been neolithic, they may have been connected with the following generation by some common traits, although there is little evidence for this; but the two people certainly differed in cultural characteristics.
The race that commenced building in the middle of the 8th stratum was apparently less different from the population of the upper strata than from its predecessors. But differences can here, also, be discovered. The chipped tools of local materials still continue for some time (about to VIIa), and obsidian seems to have come to them as a rather rare material. Only a few bone implements from grave 8 are extant in this group of strata. Contrasted with the usage of the people of the upper strata is also the use of bone arrow blades, which the last inhabitants of the mound apparently did not possess. They had not yet departed from an extended employment of bone as a working material; a fact usually more characteristic of a primitive people than of one further advanced.
One observation should still be made in this connection. It is a striking fact that in the fifth stratum and its immediate proximity a number of objects appear, the likeness of which was not found elsewhere in the whole mound. They are:
(1) Fragments of metate-like stones, stratum V.
A long, dull, chisel-like tool of horn, from stratum V.
A tablet of slate polished on one side, stratum V.
(2) Pieces of antlers, truncated for use as tools, stratum V, and a knife-like implement, stratum V.
It seems possible that such sporadic types of tools were left by a people that only temporarily inhabited the mound. Since, however, up to the present time parallel investigations have furnished but little material, such an hypothesis cannot be tested as to its exactness; nor is it possible to state from what region they might have come.