ANCIENT BERING STRAIT AND 

 POPULATION SPREAD 



J. L. Giddings, Jr. 



Department of Anthropology 

 University of Pennsylvania 



An analysis of the Cape Denbigh materials excavated in the 

 Bering Strait region during the past three seasons will neces- 

 sarily entail some reappraisal of our views on broader anthro- 

 pological problems. Some of this must await a detailed study. 

 However, one or two problems of a more academic nature beg 

 for consideration even before the full significance of the site is 

 known. 



The teacher of anthropology is faced, year after year, with 

 the task of creating a background for students that will help 

 to explain for them the diverse racial and cultural structures of 

 the New World. He is encouraged to speculate broadly in 

 order to satisfy this basic demand, even though concrete proofs 

 may be lacking. The often-repeated explanations that one 

 learned some years ago in college do not fully answer his own 

 questions about recent discoveries and techniques in anthro- 

 pology and how they fit together into a logical pattern. If he 

 is therefore obliged to question certain emphases of the recent 

 past in his attempt to evaluate horizons emerging in the far 

 north, and to seek some alternative explanations of American 

 cultures and peoples, it is with the greatest respect for the 

 various points of view of his colleagues and those others whose 

 findings he re-orients to his own purposes. The proposals out- 

 lined in the following paragraphs are offered in this spirit, in 

 hopes that they may be later held up to more detailed scrutiny. 1 



A remarkable paradox in American archaeology exists in the 

 willingness of almost all students of the New World to accept 



i The author is grateful to Doctors Henry B. Collins, Jr., Loren C. Eiseley, 

 and Froelich G. Rainey for having read the first draft of this article. 



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