BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. XXXVII
THE HELIOTYPE PRINTING CO., BOSTON
DOMESTIC ANVIL (REDUCED), TOP AND SIDE
BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. XXXVIII
THE HELIOTYPE PRINTING CO., BOSTON
METATE (REDUCED), EDGE AND TOP
The largest ahst seen in Seriland is illustrated in plates XXXIX and XL, on a scale of one-third linear (its maximum length being 15⅜ inches=39.5 cm.); it is a dark, fine-grained silicious schist or quartzite, quite obscurely laminated; it weighs 33 pounds 8 ounces (15.20 kilograms). It is a natural slab, probably washed from a talus and slightly wave-worn; it might have come originally from either the southwestern flanks of Sierra Seri or the more southerly half of Sierra Kunkaak—certainly hundreds of similar slabs strew the eastern shore of Bahia Kunkaak, while the western shore, especially about Punta Narragansett, would yield thousands. Its artificial features (aside from miscellaneous battering) are limited to grinding of the two faces defined by structure planes. The principal face is abraded into an oblong or spoon-shape basin, about 8 inches (20 cm.) long, 5 inches (16 cm.) broad, and fully three-fourths of an inch (2 cm.) deep, the basin penetrating two or three laminæ of the slab in such wise as to produce the annular markings faintly shown in plate XXXIX; the obverse is slightly rubbed and ground and somewhat battered, like the face of the preceding specimen; and both sides are flecked with a fine but dark flour-like substance (doubtless derived from grinding mesquite beans, etc.) forced into the texture of the stone by the grinding process. The entire slab is greasy and blood-stained, while battered spots about the edges and angles of the principal face record considerable use as an anvil for breaking up quarry—indeed, shreds of turtle flesh and bits of intestinal debris still lodge in some of the interstices. The specimen was taken from the old rancheria at the base of Punta Tormenta, where it had apparently been in desultory use for generations.
A sort of connecting link between ahst and hupf is afforded by elongate beach pebbles, such as that illustrated in plate XLI, which lay beside the large ahst last described, and which bears a few inconspicuous marks of use in slight battering at both ends, with a few shreds of turtle flesh about the blunter extremity (at the right on the plate). The specimen is shown natural size; it is of pinkish-gray trachyte (?), and weighs 1 pound 12 ounces (0.79 kilograms). It is noteworthy chiefly as an illustration of the Seri mode of seizing and using hand-implements (a mode repeatedly observed at Costa Rica in 1894); the pebble comfortably fits the Caucasian hand, held hammerwise; it is intuitively grasped in this way, and when so seized and used with an outward swing forms an effective implement for bone-crushing, etc., the natural striking-point being near the free end; but the centripetally moving Seri invariably seizes the specimen in such manner that the free end is directed inward, while the thumb laps over the grasped end, when the strokes are directed downward and inward, the striking-point being the extreme tip of the free end. A similar specimen is illustrated in plate XLII. It is of tough and homogeneous hornblende-granite, somewhat shorter and broader than its homologue, but of exactly the same weight; it, too, is battered at the ends, but is otherwise quite natural in form. It was collected at Rada Ballena in conjunction with the ahst illustrated in plate XXXV; and like that specimen it is soaked with blood and fat, and bore shreds of flesh when found. Both these elongate cobbles are of interest as representatives of a somewhat aberrant type; for the favorite form of hupf is shorter and thicker, as shown by the prevailing shapes, both in use and lying about the jacales—indeed, the elongate form is seldom used on the coast and never carried into the interior.