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Patki and Katcina group were united. This growth was of short duration, for in a few years the Katcina clan began to decrease in numbers, their houses fell to decay, and the beams were torn down to be utilized for buildings in more desirable situations. The reason for this desertion is evident: exposure to cold and limitation in space for buildings with heliotropic exposure were in themselves sufficient causes to bring it about.

The distribution of religious paraphernalia in Walpi confirms the traditional account above given and points to the houses in which these objects are kept as the original building nuclei. This identification of the oldest houses is confirmed by the fact that in the annual personation of the Sun god in the Powamu ceremony this being visits these houses and no others, as is the case in Hano and Sichomovi.

It has been shown above that the rows of rooms forming the ground-plan of a typical Hopi pueblo are oriented in the same direction, and that this is due to a desire to obtain a maximum amount of heat through heliotropic exposure. An examination of their plans and a study of the legends clearly indicate that the same law is operative on the other mesas, and can also be extended to the whole culture area commonly known as the Pueblo.

There remains to be considered the cause that has led to the adoption, throughout the plateau region of the Southwest, of the Pueblo form of architecture—or the grouping of clans into composite villages with united rooms. This form, as I have repeatedly pointed out, is protective, and has been evolved from a preëxisting condition in which the sedentary people of the Southwest were more scattered, the habitations partaking more of the nature of isolated rancherias or clan houses. This stage characterized the population of the Gila valley before predatory tribes raided it and forced the people from their farms. It was likewise characteristic of the other great valleys of this region. The sedentary people were settled in the most advantageous positions for agriculture, evidently irrespective of their foes. The advent of enemies and a sense of insecurity led to consolidation of houses, pushing the people into inaccessible cañons and remote valleys. The clan houses joined

and became the pueblo. During this epoch was also developed the cliff-house, synchronous in origin with or later than the Pueblo form. Instead of antedating the latter type of village the cliff form was contemporary with it. It thus happens that the many similarities in cliffhouse and Pueblo culture are not so much due to descent one from the other as to elaboration of both from a preëxisting culture which was formerly spread over the arid region of the Southwest and in the adjoining states of Mexico. The influences that led to the peculiar architectural features in the northern part of this area were the pressure of predatory tribes and the desire for sunny exposure. BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY,

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CERTAIN NOTCHED OR SCALLOPED STONE TAB

LETS OF THE MOUND-BUILDERS

By W. H. HOLMES

In a recent work1 Mr Clarence B. Moore illustrates a number of discoidal and rectangular stone plates obtained from mounds in Alabama and elsewhere in the South, which he is able to identify as mortar plates, or palettes, intended for the grinding of pigments. It thus happens that another of the several groups of archeological objects heretofore placed in the problematical class is safely assigned to a definite use, although the exact manner and significance of the use remain still in a measure undetermined. The rectangular plates bear a more or less marked resemblance to the flattish rectangular tablets employed by Pueblo shamans in grinding pigments for sacred purposes; and several of the mound specimens, both rectangular and circular, as demonstrated by Mr Moore, bear unmistakable evidence of use in preparing colors, a sufficient amount of the pigments remaining on the surface to permit chemical analysis. The colors are for the greater part red and white, the former being hematite and the latter carbonite of lead.

Plates of the general type described by Mr Moore are obtained from ancient mounds in the Ohio valley and the Southern states. The rectangular specimens rarely exceed 10 inches in width by about 15 in length, and the discoidal variety ranges from 6 to 15 inches in diameter. The thickness does not exceed 11⁄2 inches. The central portion of one face is often slightly concave, a few are quite flat on both faces, while a smaller number are doubly convex in a slight degree. The margins are square or roundish in section, and in a few cases are slightly modified in profile, giving a moldinglike effect. With rare exceptions the periphery of the discoidal plates is notched or scalloped. In many cases one or more engraved lines or grooves encircle the face of the plate near the margin, and not infrequently the notches are carried as shallow grooves 1Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, XIII, 1905.

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inward over the surface of the plate, terminating against the outer encircling band or connecting as loops forming what may be regarded as reversed scallops. The most striking features of these plates, occurring perhaps in one case in ten, are certain engraved designs occupying the reverse side of the plate, the grinding surface being regarded as the obverse. These subjects are undoubtedly of mythologic origin and include highly conventional representations of the human hand, the open eye, the rattlesnake, death'shead symbols, etc. The rectangular plates have notches or scallops at the ends only, and the surface, excepting in the Ohio specimens, has no embellishment other than simple engraved lines extending across the plate near the ends or continuing around the four sides. just inside the border.

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The Cincinnati tablet (pl. XIII, d), the best known of the rectangular plates, was found in a large mound, associated with human remains, in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1841, and was described first in the Cincinnati Gazette, December 12, 1842. The question of its authenticity is fully discussed by Clark. This as well as other rectangular specimens from the Ohio valley have sculptured figures on one face, the reverse exhibiting irregular depressions and grooves such as might result from prolonged sharpening of stone implements. The remarkable figures engraved on the surface of this tablet, first analyzed by Putnam and Willoughby, are highly conventionalized animal forms, human or reptilian. A second, closely analogous tablet was found by Dr Hurst in a mound at Waverley, Pike county, Ohio, in 1878. Similar in general characteristics, although eccentric in outline and having engraved designs on both sides, is the Berlin tablet, found in a small mound near Berlin, Ohio.3 the discoidal plates the most northerly example is that obtained from a mound near Naples, Illinois. It is 121⁄2 inches in diameter and about 1 inch thick near the margin, but having a well-marked mortar depression on the obverse side is thinner toward the center. On the reverse face, which is slightly convex, is engraved a human

1 Prehistoric Remains, 1878.

2 Proc. A. A. A. S., XLIV, 1896.

3 McLean, The Mound-builders, 1879.

Henderson in Smithsonian Report, 1882.

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