Bering Strait and Population Spread— Giddings 87 



two traditions and to help prove that prehistory in America 

 has been remarkably connected since the first humans set foot 

 in the New World. 



Archaeology in Alaska is a fairly recent matter for research. 

 It began, and has continued, as an offshoot of archaeology in 

 the United States proper. It has been carried out mainly by 

 investigators fresh from the States, or from Europe, and its 

 interpretations have inevitably reflected the current methods 

 and thoughts emanating" from universities and museums far 

 from the locus of operations. Dall interpreted the shell heaps 

 of the Aleutians as it was customary in the 1870's to interpret 

 shell heaps of the eastern United States. Jochelson amended 

 Aleutian interpretation to conform with the advances of the 

 1920's, and now Laughlin is finding the same field fresh with 

 opportunities of re-ordering according to the multi-discipline 

 approach which he and his Harvard associates have put to a 

 test. Collins, de Laguna, and Rainey turned out their first 

 major works in a period of re-birth of archaeological interest 

 stimulated in part, some twenty years ago, by Folsom finds and 

 the delineation of an eastern Thule culture. Threaded through 

 two generations of researchers was the commanding person- 

 ality of Ales Hrdlicka and his marvellous, statistics-based con- 

 servatism. 



The Recognition of Early Man in Alaska 



Until 1935, little attention was given to the theoretical prob- 

 ability that the campsites of Early Man might be numerous in 

 Alaska, and less to the actual search for these sites. This was 

 partly because of the greater urgency to explore the rich se- 

 quences of coastal sites for knowledge of Eskimo backgrounds, 

 and partly because of unrewarding surveys of the vast, wooded 

 inland regions. Analyses of Eskimo culture have often linked 

 traits and complexes with those of other parts of the world. 

 In the absence of detailed archaeological knowledge of either 

 northeastern Siberia or the boreal forests of North America, 

 this kind of study was necessarily dependent largely on the 

 inferential evidence of ethnology. Two main problems existed 



