ARCHEOLOGY OF GREENLAND— MATHIASSEN 399 



In Greenland the mosquitoes are an awful torment in July and 

 August, not only the ordinary big mosquitoes, but in late summer 

 there are millions of small, stinging flies, which get into eyes, ears, 

 nostrils, and mouth; at many places it is impossible on calm days 

 to work without a mosquito net, and that is an awful nuisance. 

 Without mosquitoes the Arctic summer would be nearly a paradise. 



We will now mention a few of the places where excavations have 

 been made, and see what results have been obtained. 



The key to the archeology of Greenland was the great find from 

 Naujan in Repulse Bay, north of Hudson Bay in the Canadian Arc- 

 tic. This village was excavated in 1922, on the Fifth Thule Expe- 

 dition. 



At the south end of a small lake, 40 to 60 feet above the sea, 20 

 ruined houses were located. The situation was such that it suggested 

 the land had risen about 30 feet since these houses were built. The 

 houses were half underground, round, small, about 10 feet in diam- 

 eter; the walls were built of stones, turf, and big whale skulls; the 

 roof had been supported with whale ribs and jaw bones; the entrance 

 to the house was through a deep, narrow, stone-set passage. 



About 3,000 specimens were found at Naujan, mostly from a big, 

 3-foot thick refuse heap, found in front of three of the houses. In 

 the frozen earth of this midden the specimens had been very well 

 preserved. A few blades of native copper and a bit of meteoric iron 

 was found and most of the objects were of bone — whale bone, antler, 

 walrus, and narwhal ivory — and stone — slate, flint, jade, soapstone. 

 Very prominent amongst the finds was baleen, shaped to all kinds of 

 implements; whaling had evidently played a great part in the econ- 

 omy of the Naujan Eskimos. Among the specimens must be men- 

 tioned harpoon heads, mostly of a sf)ecial form, with open shaft 

 socket; arrow heads of antler with conical tang; balls of bird bolas; 

 sledge shoes of whale bone and baleen; bows of baleen; knives with 

 bone handles and stone blades ; drills ; adzes ; women's knives ; lamps 

 (with a row of knobs near the front edge) and cooking pots of soap- 

 stone; fragments of pottery vessels; baleen cups and bowls; many 

 ornamental trinkets of ivory, dolls and other toys. 



The culture of this Naujan find is quite different from the culture 

 of the recent inliabitants of this region, the Central Eskimos; these 

 people use only snow houses and are rather caribou hunters than seal 

 hunters. When one asks these Eskimos about the old ruins they say 

 that they belonged to the Tunit, a foreign people who left the country 

 and went to the north, when they themselves reached the coast from 

 inland. These Tunit people were small but strong; the men had 

 bearskin trousers and the women very long boots. 



