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Show THE ANCIENT BASKET MAKERS OF SOUTHEASTERN UTAH modern times, save in this restricted area, the throwing- stick, whose nearest neighbor is found in Chihuahua, Mexico, in the form of the " atlatl," an implement of war concerning weapons which wonderful tales were told by the early chroni- and clers of New Spain. There are other implements and Utensils, utensils peculiar to this people, one of which' is similar to the rabbit- stick used by the Hopi Indians of to- day ; but the most striking features are the absence of houses in the caves and the manner of burying the dead. The Basket Makers lived in caves, but the investigations in this region furnish no evidences of their having had stone houses. In some of the caves the houses of the Cliff Dwellers have been found over the remains of the earlier Basket Makers. In relation to the rooms excavated by the Basket Makers, McLoyd and Graham say: " Some of the skulls in this collection were obtained from underground rooms that had been excavated in the clay bottoms of the caves. The largest of these rooms are as much as twenty- two feet in diameter. They have been filled in with ashes and other refuse, and the stone cliff houses constructed over them. The heads taken from these rooms are of natural form, never having been changed by pres-sure. No skulls of this shape are found in the stone cliff houses that are in the same caves, and no flattened skulls are found in the underground rooms. Articles found in the rooms beneath the cliff dwellings are, to some extent, different from those ob-tained in the stone houses above." Wetherill makes mention of a great many depressions in the form of " pot- holes," some of which were lined with baked clay: their use may have been, primarily, the storing of Mode of grain or provisions, but a secondary and final utiliza- Burial, tion was as a grave. In these carefully prepared places, the bodies of the people were buried. They were doubled up and placed at the bottom of the hole, then covered with beauti-ful feather or rabbit- skin robes and finally with baskets, either several small ones or one large carrying basket. No matter what the character or quality of the other mortuary articles might be, the basket was almost invariably in evidence. 7 |