"About a hundred pottery shards and smaller pottery vessels were recovered from the site at Bonasila. Pottery vessels representative of the Bonasila culture were shaped out of the solid and show no trace of coiling. In this respect they conform to the generalized north Asiatic and Eskimo ware. There is, however, no check stamp decorative design that is applied with a paddle by the Eskimo nor evidence that pottery vessels had been built up about a basketry base. The paste is light buff or gray in color, the buff ware being better fired and of the same color on the inside, while the gray ware is either gray or black on the inner surface. A well-defined unfired area covers one-half of the sectional diameter. Both buff and gray wares show evidence of better firing than in modern Eskimo pottery. Tempering is of coarse fragments of steatite, which is much more durable than tempering materials such as blood, feathers, and ashes formerly employed by the primitive Eskimo potter.
"The pottery from Bonasila is utilitarian and consists of shallow spherical lamps, globose bowls, and cooking pots without feet or bases. The ware is coarse, side walls and bottom varying from 1 to 2 centimeters in sectional thickness. This type of pottery is practically duplicated in shards recovered by Doctor Hrdlička from what is now Eskimo territory in the Yukon Valley near the Russian Mission. It is probable that further search would bring to light an extensive region yielding this type of ancient pottery of distinctive design and unrelated either to Tinné or Eskimo ware.
"Decorative attempts consist of bold incised parallel transverse lines on the upper sector of the outer surface of the vessel. Deep corrugations appear on the inside of the rim flare. Both corrugations and incised line decorations were made with a paddle or wood splinter shaped for the purpose. Some of the shards have deeply incised punctations irregularly encircling the outer surface of the vessel just below the rim extension.
"Shallow spherical pottery lamps accompanied surface burials at Bonasila. These lamps have a less durable tempering material than the other pottery fragments recovered. The paste is porous and is poorly fired. Decorative designs incised on the interior surface of the lamps are reminiscent of typical Eskimo punctate designs as traced on the inner circumference of rectilinear or curvilinear etchings on ivory and bone. It is very probable that these pottery lamps are of a later date and are of Eskimoan handicraft.
THE ALASKAN GROOVED STONE AX
[Pl. 10]
"The grooved stone ax is a typical New World implement. Its distribution is limited to tribes of the eastern maize area, the Pueblo tribes of the Southwest, the Athapascans, and the northern woodlands tribes. Elsewhere in America grooved stone implements of any description are rare, although not unknown. The groove for the attachment of cord or sinew binding is common also to the stone adze, which is characteristic of Indian tribes of the Pacific Northwest and of the Eskimo of Arctic America. The distribution of the stone adze is more intensive but is much less extensive than is that of the grooved stone ax and appears to be an environmental form borrowed from the Arctic tribes by the Indian of southeast Alaska and of British Columbia.
"The double-bitted, multiple-grooved stone ax has two areas of distribution in North America. One of these is the country of the northeastern woodlands Indians, extending as far south as the Central Atlantic States. The other area of distribution is the extreme northwest, or the mainland of Alaska.
"In the collection brought to the National Museum from Alaska by Doctor Hrdlička are eight grooved stone implements. All but one of these have cutting edges for use as axes or adzes. The exception, Cat. No. 332809, U.S.N.M., is a grooved spherical stone maul or club 9.5 centimeters (3.7 inches) long and 7.5 centimeters (2.9 inches) in sectional diameter. This grooved object was found near Tanana on the beach of the Yukon River. Like the grooved stone axes in Doctor Hrdlička's collection, the groove is incomplete. A flattened space of approximately 2 centimeters is left un-grooved for the hafting of a flat surfaced handle end with binding, which is passed around the transverse groove and then through a hole in the wooden handle.
"Three single-grooved, double-bitted stone axes were collected from various points on the Yukon River. These are of interest because of their similar grooving and double cutting edges. Each is identical in form, each has been shaped by pecking, except in the sector near the cutting edges where they have been sharpened and polished by grinding. Between the raised borders of the centrally pecked groove and the cutting edges the surface has been shaped to a slight concavity by pecking. In Cat. No. 332805, U.S.N.M., this concavity is replaced by a well-defined convex bevel. The pecked groove is at right angles to the longitudinal axis and is comparatively shallow but has a wide diameter of 2 centimeters or more. The material is uniformly of basalt. The axes are 20 centimeters or more long, while the sectional diameter varies from 6 to 10 centimeters according to whether the ax is flattened or oval in section.