Stone artifact recently donated to the Sealaska Heritage Institute Special Collections. Source: SHI.
Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) is a regional Native nonprofit organization founded for the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian people of Southeast Alaska. SHI was established in 1981 by Sealaska Corp., a for-profit company formed under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA). SHI, formerly Sealaska Heritage Foundation, administers Sealaska Corp.’s cultural and educational programs.
I know this because I got linked the other day by SHI’s Special Collections Research Center Blog, which I hadn’t seen before. While not updated as frequently as this corner of the internavel is, it contains a lot of great posts going back to 2007 – you can see links to their archives down on the lower right hand side of their front page.
The most recent post concerns the artifact shown above. It looks to my eye like a, possibly unfinished, hand maul. They seem a little uncertain about the function though, so someone should go over to their site and give some opinions – they take comments. People with dirty minds are excluded from this request.
Northwest Coast Archaeology 