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

VANSTONE: TIKCHIK VILLAGE 279One of the more abundant artifact types in the entire Tikchikcollection is sled shoe sections of which there are 37 ;30 are of whalebone and seven of antler (PI. 6,7). Holes for pegging to a runnerare drilled 8 mm. to 1.3 cm. in diameter and are irregularly spaced.The width of the unbroken shoes ranges from 2 to 5 cm. and many ofthe sections are thin, showing considerable wear. As might be expected,the antler shoes are shorter, narrower, and thinner than thosemade of bone.Three story knives are made of curved, flat antler sections whichwiden at the distal end to form a knife-like blade. The specimensrange in length from 14.3 to 27 cm., the longest being extremely thinwith two parallel engraved lines running along one side. Inside theselines, pairs of short, chevron-shaped lines occur at 5 cm. intervals.This decorative motif extends the entire length of one edge of thespecimen.There are five artifacts, all of antler and complete or nearly complete,that cannot be identified. One is a thin, oblong piece of antler,rounded and with a raised lip at each end on one side (PI. 6,9).Obviously this specimen was intended for lashing to something. Ashort, thick section of antler comes to a point at each end and has around hole drilled through the center (PI. 6,4). A thin, flat fragmentof antler has been cut almost to a round shape and may have beena gaming piece (PL 6,5). A narrow fragment of antler is decoratedalong one surface with parallel incised lines (PI. 6,12). The finalunidentified object is a section of antler carved into a series of bellshapedsections and flat across what appears to be the top (PI. 6,6).The lower end of this object is broken. It resembles the distal endof a ramrod for cleaning guns but it seems rather light and thin tohave been used for that purpose.In addition to the identified and unidentified artifacts describedabove, a total of 139 sections of cut antler and 12 pieces of cutbone were counted and discarded in the field.ClayA total of 310 clay cooking pot fragments was recovered from theTikchik site. This count was made in the laboratory and it is possiblethat the number of excavated sherds was slightly increased bybreakage during shipment. An attempt was made to join togetherall sherds which could be joined and, as a result, seven vessels werepartially reconstructed and the total collection was reduced to 213sherds.