Exhibit Label

S'abadeb-Seattle Art Museum The D-adze is one of the indispensable implements in a carver's tool chest, along with a straight adze, a short-handle elbow adze, several crooked knives, a chisel, a stone maul, and yew wedges. Originally adze blades were made of bone, shell, or stone, but they were quickly replaced by steel blades acquired through trade and often recycled from pioneer-style axe heads or chisels, as this one appears to be. Waterman was conducting an ethnographic survey for the University of Washington during the summer seasons of 1918 and 1919, collecting place names from southern Puget Sound consultants. Curiously, the Burton Acres Shell Midden--near where Waterman collected this D-adze--was excavated in 1996 and yielded two antler adze hafts and a bone chisel dated to approximately 500-600 years ago.