BERING SEA ARCHEOLOGY — COLLINS 465 



southward, it should be noted that harpoon heads of Eskimo type 

 have been found at prehistoric sites on the Kurile Islands and in 

 Japan.^^ 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 



The excavations at Bering Strait, St. Lawrence Island, and Barrow 

 have furnished data which make possible a partial reconstruction of 

 early culture growths and contracts in the western Arctic and sub- 

 Arctic regions of America. Thus we see that St. Lawrence and the 

 Diomede Islands and the Alaskan and Siberian coasts around Bering 

 Strait were inhabited many centuries ago by groups of Eskimos 

 who possessed a common culture, which has been designated as the 

 Old Bering Sea culture. This oldest known Alaskan culture, far 

 from being a simple or primitive one, was already highly developed, 

 with an art style more elaborate and sophisticated than any pre- 

 viously known to have existed in Arctic or sub-Arctic regions. Other 

 features of material culture show a similar condition; implements, 

 utensils, and hunting gear all appear more as the end results of 

 evolutionary processes than as beginning stages. 



Having flourished for an unknown period of time, the Old Bering 

 Sea culture entered upon a stage of transition probably about a 

 thousand years ago. Changes were made in certain implement types, 

 others were discontinued, to be replaced by new tj'pes; and the rich, 

 curvilinear Old Bering Sea art degenerated into the much simpler 

 art of the Punuk period. On St. Lawrence Island a number of 

 harpoon heads and art designs have been found that are intermediate 

 between the Old Bering Sea and the Punuk. Consequently, the 

 changes there observed might be explained as having arisen locally^ 

 stimulated only by the acquisition of small quantities of Asiatic 

 metal. However, in other respects the changes are so marked that 

 such an explanation alone is not sufficient. Strong influence from 

 some outside source must have been received, either through the 

 normal process of culture dissemination or through the migration 

 of new elements of population into the Bering Strait region. Dem- 

 onstration of the latter might be possible if more skeletal material 

 were available. A sufficient number of crania from Punuk sites on 

 St. Lawrence Island have been found to show that the Eskimos 

 of that time, like the modem St. Lawrence Islanders, were meso- 

 cephalic. But of the three Old Bering Sea slaills thus far found, 

 one is mesocephalic and the other two strongly dolichocephalic. 



The close relationship between late Punuk art and that of the 

 modern Eskimos of the Yukon-Kuskokwim region may indicate a 



^ Torll, R., Etudes Archeologlquea et Dthnologiques. Les Alnou des Hes Kouriles, 

 .Tourn. Coll. Sol.. Imp. Univ. Tokyo, vol. 42, art. 1, pis. ,30. .31, .Tan. 29, 1010; Klshinouyp, 

 K., Prehistoric Fishing In Japan, Journ. Coll. Agri,, Imp. Univ. Tokyo, vol. 2, no. 7, pi. 22, 

 Dec. 26, 1911. 



