Tikchik village: a nineteenth century riverine community in ... - Cluster

270 FIELDIANA: ANTHROPOLOGY, VOLUME 56five of these show the hollow-ground groove as do all five of thebasal fragments. Four of these have flat bases and one is concave.There are five sections from the centers of blades and all butone are characterized by the hollow-ground groove. All the completespecimens and fragments are of a size to suggest their use as arrowor lance heads, although the larger implements may have been knifeblades.The larger number of slate end blade blanks attests to the importanceof the finished implement. There are 53 of these blanks andthey range from a very small blank, 3.1 cm. in length, presumablyintended as an arrowhead, to specimens in excess of 10 cm. longwhich would undoubtedly have been finished as knife blades or lanceheads. The nature of the workmanship exhibited by these blanksseems to suggest that a piece of slate was first chipped to roughly thecorrect size and shape, and then finished by grinding first the flatsurfaces and then the working edges. Three of the larger, more carefullyworked blanks are illustrated (PI. 2,7-9).IThere are no ground slate ulu blades in the collection, but sixulu blade blanks are of this material. All are roughly flaked and donot clearly suggest the final shape of the blade. All specimens, however,would probably have been finished with a convex cutting edge,there being some degree of variability in this convexity. It also appearsthat none of these ulu blades would have been tanged but wouldrather have had flat or convex proximal surfaces for insertion intothe handle.Ten artifacts served as blades for end-hafted skin scrapers. Eachis made of a soft, fine-grained schist and all are crudely fashionedexcept for the working edge which is V-shaped in cross-section. Fivecomplete or nearly complete specimens taper toward the proximalend for insertion into an antler handle (PI. 2,io,l2). Three scrapersappear to have had straight sides (PI. 2,ii), while two fragmentsare not complete enough to indicate their shape. Skin scraper bladesare always made of a soft material but otherwise they are difficult todistinguish from small adze blades. Were it not for this distinction,at least two of these specimens would have been referred to as planingadze blades. Eight skin scraper blade blanks of soft schist areroughly chipped on all surfaces preparatory to the final polishing andgrinding of the working edges. All would have had tapered sideswhen finished (PL 2,13).A single axe blade of very fine-grained schist is so identified becauseof a pronounced lashing knob about 6 cm. above the working