Stone Sinker
date: label: Accession Date
content: 21 Dec 1938
name: label: Donor Name
content: Dr. Ales F. Hrdlicka
notes: label: Notes
content: From card: "Red. Cobble grooved around middle, over small end & on shoulders."
label: Notes
content: Source of the information below: Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center Alaska Native Collections: Sharing Knowledge website, by Aron Crowell, entry on this artifact http://alaska.si.edu/record.asp?id=496, retrieved 9-3-2012: Sinker, Alutiiq (Sugpiaq), Koniag. A grooved stone sinker weighted down a wooden halibut hook so that it floated just above the ocean bottom. When fishing from a beach, the fisherman used a rising tide to float the hook; he tied on the stone weight with a slip knot so that it would come off when a halibut was on the line. At low tide he went back to retrieve the weight. "It's got a slip knot just tied around it so when you put tension, when this is stretched, it comes loose. So if a fish got caught on there it would pull that loose, that weight, and [the halibut] was free to roam around-pull or whatever, and that didn't get hung up on anything. Then at low tide you would go back and get that rock and keep using it over and over again." - Bobby Stamp, 1987, from the Alutiiq Museum oral history archive.
label: Notes
content: This object is on loan to the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, from 2010 through 2027.
label: Record Last Modified
content: 13 Jan 2022
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Kodiak Island / Uyak Bay, Kodiak Quad / Kodiak Islands, Alaska, United States, North America
topic: label: Topic
content: Archaeology
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 149653
label: USNM Number
content: A395441-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Sinker
physicalDescription: label: Length - Object
content: 10.5 cm