UNIQUE PREHISTORIC CARVINGS FROM NEAR VANCOUVER, B. C.

T

BY HARLAN I. SMITH

WO prehistoric specimens, which I secured on September 16, 1922, for the Victoria Memorial Museum, Ottawa-the National Museum of Canada-seem to me to be unique. They are each made of a prong of an elk antler carved with an animal form, and are illustrated in Figs. 1 and 2, from drawings by O. E. Prud'homme. These two specimens were presented to the Museum by Mr. M. H. Whalen of Boundary Bay, Washington, and are entered under catalogue numbers XII-B-1504 and XII-B1505. Mr. Whalen said they were found in digging in the road cut in the large and well-known shell-heap which extends along the western shore of Boundary Bay, from near where the high land of Point Roberts is washed by the sea in Washington, northward across the international boundary and well out on the low land bordering the bay on the British Columbia side. The road cut is on the Washington side of the line.

Mr. Ralph L. Roys of Vancouver kindly accompanied me in my work for a number of days, repeatedly motoring me not only to the Boundary Bay shell-heap but to other archaeological sites near Vancouver.

The heap is perhaps half a mile long and for a considerable distance reaches a height of over six feet. In the heap is a row of several very large and deep pits, parallel to the beach, apparently house sites.

As to the antiquity of these antler prongs, when Mr. Whalen first showed them to us they were covered with the black soil common to this shell-heap and to the others of the neighborhood. I have no doubt that they came from the heap. The age of the specimens is consequently probably as great as this shell-heap. It is not likely that they were more recently buried in the heap or are from a possible recent addition to the heap. The heap when I first saw it in 1898 was partly covered with forest trees, in fact

it still is. Many of these trees were of large size. There is a similar shell-heap on the edge of the high land overlooking the level delta land, about a mile to the northwestward. It is opposite the school house, on the main or only good road from Ladners to Point Roberts, about a mile north of the international boundary or where the road ascends from the low flat land to the highland. On stumps of trees on this nearby heap Mr. Roys and I counted over four hundred rings of annual growth. Although Indians have lived in the neighborhood within, say, three miles until the present time and have left more modern deposits, it is altogether likely that the part of the Boundary Bay heap from which these specimens came is also over four hundred years old. In addition to this it must have taken some time for the heap to form. I have seen heaps at some modern Indian villages growing very rapidly, and at other villages not growing perceptibly.

Human skulls of both the rare narrow type and the common type similar to those of the present Indians of the region have been found in this deposit as well as in the one at Eburne which is in the Lower Fraser valley These objects may have been made by people of either type.

The antler prongs seem to have been considerably smoothed and made more tapering or conoid than they are in nature.

The carving on each specimen is rather faint and is slighty weathered away in places, so that it is best seen in cross light, first from one direction and then from another at right angles, but otherwise the carving is the same on the reverse as on the obverse.

The carving consists of shallow grooves, usually narrow, outlining the animal forms. The first, illustrated in Fig. 1, represents on each side of the prong an open mouth with protruding tongue, an eye with a long line running back from it, short lines, extending downward from both the eye and this line, and a long longitudinal line which with the corresponding line on the reverse forms a v-shaped figure pointing forward on the back. There are faint lines, apparently of another v-shaped figure inside this one. The little lines depending from the eye are three in number on each side of the object, and bend back in the middle like little forelegs. The lines depending from the long line back from the

eye may have formed groups or a continuous hachure. On the reverse they are too indistinct to elucidate this point. The tip of the tongue is missing and shows a freshly broken surface as if it had been broken by being dropped or struck since it was found. The base of the prong appears as if it had been sliced off by a tool of the road builders, but at the edges shows that it was roughly whittled or hacked nearly if not entirely around with a narrowedged tool or one with such a very rough edge as to leave narrow

scars.

The second carving, illustrated in Fig. 2, represents an eye, the two edges of an open mouth, and the rear limit of the jaw or head. On the reverse, faint short lines extending up perpendicular to the upper edge of the mouth probably represent teeth. The corners of the mouth are excavated to a level with the bottom of the grooves. On the under side is an excavation narrow in front and wide at the rear, which represents the hollow space between the under side of the jaws. The base of this prong is irregularly rounded and smooth.

The use of these two objects is unknown, but Mr. Roys suggests that they may have been worn as a headdress after the fashion of buffalo horns.

VICTORIA MEMORIAL MUSEUM,

OTTAWA, CANADA.

BOOK REVIEWS

METHODS AND PRINCIPLES

Social Organization. By the late W. H. R. RIVERS, M.A., M.D., D.Sc., LL.D., F.R.S. Edited by W. J. PERRY, M.A. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1924. Octavo. XII, 226 pp. (Price $3.50).

This posthumous work by Dr. Rivers will be particularly appreciated by ethnologists and sociologists as it sets forth the latest views which its eminent author had developed.

For the student the book has the advantage of covering in the compact compass of 172 pages the entire range of social organization. Three appendices, two by the author and one by the editor, deal with certain special features which will be referred to later.

A preface by Dr. G. Elliot Smith tells of the important work of Mr. Perry, the editor, in devoting

a vast amount of time and labour to the preparation of the manuscript for the Press. In fact, he has done so much that his name ought to appear as part-author; but he has preferred to give lucid expression and consistency to Dr. Rivers' views rather than obtrude his own opinions.

Mr. Perry's opinions on dual organization, however, are given untrammeled expression in the third appendix.

The scope of Dr. Rivers' book is well shown by the table of contents, which follows: I: Social Groupings. The Family. II: Social Groupings. Clan, Moiety and Tribe. III: Marriage. IV: Kinship and Relationship. V: Father-Right and Mother-Right. VI: Property. VII: Fraternities and Secret Societies. VIII: Occupation, Class and Caste. IX: Government. Appendix I: On the Origin of the Classificatory System of Relationships. Appendix II: Social Organization in Australia. Appendix III: The Dual Organization (by Mr. W. J. Perry). Appendix I is not new, but is a reprint of an article written in 1907 by Dr. Rivers and published in Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor.

As an example of the author's fairness in regard to many moot problems the reader will find his attitude as to the sequence of fatherright and mother-right entirely free of dogma. He writes (page 99):