BERING SEA AECHEOLOGY COLLINS 457 



be the slo\y but certain one of taking the excavation down inch by 

 inch as the frozen soil thaws out through exposure to the atmosphere. 

 As a result of the excavations at Punuk and Cape Kialegak it was 

 found that the graceful, curvilinear art of the Old Bering Sea period 

 had not suddenly disappeared, to be succeeded immediately by the 

 comparatively simple art of the modern Eskimo, but that on St. 

 Lawrence Island, at least, it had entered upon a period of transition. 

 This transitional or Punuk stage, as it is called, employed simple 

 designs composed of dots and circles and straight or slightly curving 

 lines.^ There is also a marked difference in the techniques of the 

 two styles. The Old Bering Sea circles and ellipses usually sur- 

 mounted a slight elevation and were somewhat irregular in outline, 

 having been made freehand; most of the lines were lightly incised, 

 although deeper lines were often emplo3^ed to afford contrast (pis. 3 

 and 4). Punuk ornamentation, on the other hand, is much more 

 uniform, with deeply and evenly incised lines and mechanically per- 

 fect circles which could have been produced only wnth metal tools 

 (pi. 5). This supposition is borne out by the finding of a few en- 

 graving implements with small iron points in deposits of Punuk age. 



This raises the question as to how the Eskimo came to possess 

 iron in prehistoric times. Eskimo ruins dating from the Russian 

 period are easily distinguished from those of greater age by the 

 presence of glass beads and metal and by certain late types of arti- 

 facts. That the Punuk technique antedated this period is shown by 

 the fact that at the old site on Punuk Island this art, with its metal- 

 engraved lines, was found from top to bottom of the 16-foot kitchen- 

 midden, which, according to the above-mentioned criteria, appeared 

 to have been abandoned for around 200 years. Under these cir- 

 cumstances it would appear that small quantities of metal, probably 

 derived originally from central Siberia, reached St. Lawrence 

 Island some centuries before the arrival of the Russians. There are 

 references in early Chinese literature to the use of iron in the third 

 century, A.D., by the Su-chen, a tribe dwelling in eastern Siberia 

 to the north of Korea." The Su-chen possessed on the whole a 

 stone-age culture and no doubt had relations with neighboring tribes 

 of similar status; it would not appear an unreasonable assumption, 

 therefore, that the Eskimo, along with the other tribes of north- 

 eastern Siberia, had acquired iron as early as a thousand years ago. 



In 1930 and 1931 the Smithsonian investigations were carried on 

 at the northwestern end of St. Lawrence Island in the immediate 

 vicinity of the Eskimo settlement of Gambell. Here, at the sites of 



« Collins, FI. B. Jr., Prehistoric Art of the Alaskan Eskimo, Smithsonian Misc. Coll., 

 vol. 81, no. 14, pp. 1-52, 1929. 



"Laufer, Berthold, Chinese Clay Figures, Field Mus. Nat. Hist. Publ. 177 (Anthrop. 

 Ser., vol. 13, no. 2), pp. 2G2 et seq., 1914. 



