The artifacts described here were found in direct association with the skeletons. There are few details as to actual associations. However, three hairnets (139534) were found on three of the crania.
To date, the use of small caves for the specific purpose of burial appears to be characteristic only of the extreme south of Baja California, in the Cape Region. Interments there were customarily secondary, although primary burials, usually flexed, do occur (Massey, MS 1). In the extensive area that lies between Bahía de Los Angeles and the Cape Region, excavations have failed to produce cave cemeteries. To judge from published reports, such a custom was rare elsewhere in western North America.
A variety of artifacts accompanied the burials, but while the range of types is large, the number of any one type is small. Preservation of all specimens is generally good. We are fortunate in having perishable pieces—netting, matting, cloth, and wood. Certain general categories of items, such as household utensils and remains of foodstuffs, are absent and unreported.
ARTIFACTS
STONE
Tubular stone pipes.—Two tubular sandstone pipes were recovered from the cave. They are dissimilar in size, and, in some particulars, in manufacture.
The larger specimen (139563; [pl. 12], e) is a ground sandstone tube, 29.8 cm. long. In shape it tapers very gradually from the broad bowl end to the narrower mouth end. The conical bowl is 3.5 cm. deep; the mouth end has a depth of 1.6 cm. A small (4 mm.) drilled hole connects the two ends. The mouth end is filled by a plug of partially carbonized matted coarse fibers. There is a narrow carbonized strip, slightly in from the bowl end, which runs around the pipe; this appears to be the remnant of a cord that had been tied around it. Since the pipe had been broken at that end, it may have been repaired aboriginally with such a cord.
The smaller pipe (139564; [pl. 12], d) barely tapers from the bowl end to the mouth end. The ends of this pipe are conically drilled and they interconnect; there is no drilled hole connecting the bowl with the mouth end, as in the larger specimen. A partially carbonized plug of matted coarse fibers also fills the mouth end of the smaller pipe.
Although simple tubular stone pipes occur sporadically in the archaeology of the Southwest, they are encountered frequently in central and northern Baja California. Stone tubes or pipes, called chacuacos, are often mentioned in Spanish sources as part of the shaman’s paraphernalia in this Yuman-speaking area of the peninsula (Venegas, 1944, I:93, 95; Clavigero, 1937, p. 115).