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The C Squares
*****The decision to start the Shutler Profile around the 34 meter mark (as measured from the road) was rather arbitrary and as it turned out there were many important finds hidden just a few meters before that point. The C Squares turned out to be very interesting with a number of whole adzes and a comparatively large number fishhooks. However the interest of certain finds was due more to their unusual nature, for instance an unfinished well pecked tool (possibly plano convex adze) was recovered well below the evident layers in clean sand see Diagram 25.6 and photo. Even before this remarkable and lucky find ( some excavators stop once into clean sand) was a discovery that was again below the main evident layers. Found in the first C square (0 - 1/C) in a discoloured, light gray intrusion (see photo) that seemed to be running under the main lowest layer. Here again one might have stopped excavating in this deep pocket of discoloured but relatively clean sand. I was already worn out with the weeks of work and now developing a sort of tennis elbow. I had recruited my girlfriend and even she was getting tired of carefully finding very little. Looking down into the square from the top where I was screening the excavated material it was tempting to think that something was just a bit further down.... and suddenly a very unusual and fragile complete fishhook was uncovered, discovered.
452-312-PSH-2
*****The joy of finding, at last, a complete hook is magnified when the hook turns out to be one which appears to have no equal elsewhere, and might therefore turn out to be an important clue with which to identify directions within the migrations of the Early east Polynesian Culture. Imagine then our surprise to discover that only a few centimeters lower at the bottom of the intrusion was hiding an unfinished pearl-shell scraper. Again this artifact was unlike any other yet found, this scraper had been fashioned by chipping and pecking while all others appeared to have been sawn from large blanks. Admitted the entire collection of Tubuai pearl-shell scrapers is but a handful, however it may be that early examples were fabricated by different methods. A similar possibility exists for fishhooks, where certain rare blanks do not appear to have been drilled in the center but rather carefully chipped. This then was the beginning of the C Squares which produced many important finds...see plan (25list0-2C) with artifact findspots and Diagram numbers.
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