The original excavations of Indian Knoll, near Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, were made by Clarence B. Moore in the first half of the 20th Century.  Some of the most interesting artifacts recovered from the graves were prismoidal bannerstones and antler hooks.  Moore postulated that the bannerstones were used as  net web spacers and the antler artifacts as weaving hooks for net manufacture. 

Hedging his bets on the identification of these artifacts, Moore stated:  " Judging that some use in common could be found for the hooked implements and the objects of antler and of stone, it seemed to us at first that the correct solution of the problem might be that respectively they were netting needles and objects used with them for spacing the meshes of the nets, variously called sizers, spacers, mesh-measurers, mesh-gauges, mesh-boards, mesh-blocks.  Hereafter in this report, for convenience and not because we are fully convinced they are such, we shall designate the hooked implements as needles and the objects found with them as sizers.  We were aware that we had to face two probable objections in connection with our determination, namely, the orifices in the ends of the needles, and the perforations in the sizers, neither of which seem absolutely necessary for the use to which the needles and sizers were assigned."

The true significance of these finds was not recognized until some 20 years later when the site was re-excavated and the Moore expedition data was re-analyzed by William S.Webb.  (Please see the companion book Atlatls and Bannerstones)

Note about the format of this book: When Moore published his famous series of archaeological books they were formatted around 11" x 14" plates.  As the text blocks were only  6" x 9" this resulted in huge blank margins around the text and a very cumbersome book to hold while reading.  We have reformatted this series into a more manageable 8-1/2" x 11" which allowed us to reproduce the text blocks and in-text illustrations full size.  This did necessitate a reduction in the size of the full page plates but  the color plates are still reproduced in color.  We believe that this was the best compromise and plan on releasing additional publications of his over the next several months in this modern format.

This 8-1/4" x 10-5/8",  85 page, soft cover, facsimile reprint contains 26 illustrations, four of which are full page as well as the four full page, color plates by Mary Louise Baker which feature artifacts found at the site, including the famous 24 bannerstones.  $16.95