88 Alaskan Science Conference 



for those who dug— that of the first migration to America some- 

 where in the distant past, and that of the various layerings of 

 culture that combined in Asia to give rise to a squeezing-out 

 of Eskimos as a sort of frosting over the coasts of the American 

 Arctic. To be sure, Jenness, Hrdlicka, and others were con- 

 cerned also with transporting Indians across Bering Strait, but 

 this remained primarily a theoretical problem connected with 

 language dispersion and distributions of ethnological traits. 



Eskimos have recently lived along all of the far-northern 

 coast line of America, from Prince William Sound around the 

 greater part of Alaska and eastward to Labrador and Green- 

 land. They still maintain a great continuity, particularly in 

 language. Towards the interior, and enclosed by the great arc 

 of Eskimo-speakers, are the Athapascan-speaking tribes whose 

 structure of culture is remarkably uniform throughout all but 

 the coastal strip of their western domain. The latter inhabit 

 the greater part of the American boreal forest. These facts 

 have long been recognized and integrated with ethnological 

 theory. In spite of all this, volumes have been written on 

 Eskimo prehistory, while practically nothing is known about 

 the archaeology of the northern Athapascans. The information 

 secured from the inland regions has, with the exception of 

 relatively recent sites investigated in central Alaska by Froelich 

 Rainey, and along the lower Yukon River by Frederica de 

 Laguna, shown little evidence of fitting into the ethnographic 

 picture of northern Athapascan material culture. Many of 

 these finds may now be tentatively placed in the Early Man 

 category. 



The most striking of these discoveries was placed on record 

 in 1937 when N. C. Nelson published on an assemblage of flints 

 from the University of Alaska campus, and compared it closely 

 with similar associations on the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. The 

 significant types were prepared cores and lamelles (variously 

 described as lamellar flakes, microliths, and prismatic flakes) 

 and a thin, delicate form of end scraper. This combination is 

 also to be found in other parts of the Old World, and may have 

 been first put together during the Capsian period of the Afri- 



