go Alaskan Science Conference 



reported on the finding of a Folsom point at a chipping station 

 in the high plateau area north of the Brooks Range, south of 

 Point Barrow. Two years later, another survey party was 

 accompanied by an archaeologist, Ralph Solecki, who dis- 

 covered many chipping stations across a broad expanse of the 

 same mountains and plateaus. Among Solecki's finds were two 

 flaking stations in which prepared cores and blades or lamelles 

 and associated materials duplicated in large part the Campus 

 Site "microlithic" industry previously reported by Nelson and 

 Rainey. 



The sites that were to help tie together all of these fragments 

 of evidence were those excavated at Cape Denbigh, and at the 

 Trail Creek caves of northern Seward Peninsula. The first of 

 these was a stratified site containing not only distinctive flint 

 artifacts, but great numbers of artifacts, representing presum- 

 ably the range of flint products of one people at one time. 



The Cape Denbigh site, called Iyatayet, lies on a terrace 

 some 50 feet above sea level, at the mouth of a small creek 

 flowing into Norton Bay. Here, during the years 1949, 1950 

 and 1951, were explored three cultural strata, conveniently 

 separated from one another in parts of the site by either sterile 

 layers or by sod lines resulting from abandonment for some 

 time. The uppermost layer at Iyatayet is thick near the terrace 

 slope, but thin elsewhere, and contains in well-preserved form 

 the remains of "neo-Eskimos" who inhabited the site for an esti- 

 mated 500 years— between 1100 and 1600 A.D. Beneath this 

 capping lies a poorly-preserved thick stratum containing the 

 basalt-flaked artifacts, thin, well-fired pottery and other ma- 

 terials of the "palae-Eskimos" whose material culture is closely 

 related to that of other sites recently delineated for Point Hope, 

 to the north, and Bristol Bay to the south. Two published 

 radiocarbon dates, one from the top and one from a lower part 

 of this deposit, may indicate very nearly the range of time in 

 which this occupation took place. These are 490 A.D. and 

 66 B.C. While the term "palae-Eskimo" attributes linguistic 

 relationships about which we have no knowledge to the people 

 who left these remains, there can be little doubt that the ma- 



