432 ANNtJAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, liJSO 



very old, being related to Giddings' early Denbigh Flint Complex, 

 many are of undetermined age, and others are recent camp sites of the 

 Arctic coast Eskimos who had gone inland to hunt caribou. This 

 considerable body of negative evidence tends to weaken, though of 

 course it does not disprove, the postulated inland affinities of Ipiutak. 

 On the other hand, there is increasing evidence of Ipiutak at other 

 coastal locations, for recent excavations by Larsen (1950) and Gid- 

 dings (1949) have revealed sites with Ipiutak-like culture at Kotzebue 

 Sound, Seward Peninsula, Norton Sound, and Kuskokwim Bay. 



Despite its extreme specialization and divergence from other Eskimo 

 cultures including Old Bering Sea, the Ipiutak has many features in 

 common with the latter, and on the basis of actual correspondences in 

 art and implement types is more closely related to it than to any other 

 phase of Eskimo culture. Ipiutak art employed the same elements as 

 Old Bering Sea, though in most instances the composition was some- 

 what simpler (e. g., pi. 1, q). A number of Ipiutak objects bear an 

 ornamentation that is typical of Old Bering Sea style 1 (Okvik) and 

 style 2 (pi. 2, a, b). And there are two artifacts — parts of ivory 

 "winged objects" like the third figure in figure 1 — which must be re- 

 garded as intrusive, as such objects are among the most striking and 

 diagnostic features of the Old Bering Sea culture, but are not otherwise 

 represented at Ipiutak. These two objects provide a relative terminus 

 a quo for the Ipiutak culture, showing that the houses in which they 

 were found could be coeval or later but not older than Old Bering Sea. 



In addition to art, a number of Ipiutak implements, including 

 complicated types of harpoon heads, adzes, arrowheads, bird-dart 

 prongs, and snow goggles, are identical with or very similar to Old 

 Bering Sea types. Ipiutak also shows significant resemblances to 

 Dorset, to the prehistoric Aleutian and Cook Inlet cultures, and to 

 that of the modern Eskimos of the Yukon-Bristol Bay area. 



The Ipiutak flint industry is undoubtedly a survival from the Si- 

 berian Neolithic. However, Larsen and Rainey (19-18) have shown 

 that Ipiutak also had connections with Siberian bronze- and iron-age 

 cultures of around the beginning of the Christian Era, from which 

 they conclude "that the Ipiutak people at that time lived on the Arctic 

 periphery of these culture centers" (p. 160). The original homeland 

 of the Ipiutak people, they believe, was along the lower Ob and 

 Yenesei Rivers, and their culture has such close parallels in this and 

 adjacent regions that "it has not flourished very long on American 

 soil." Postulating a short interval between the time the Ipiutak 

 people left their Siberian home and their arrival in Alaska, Larsen 

 and Rainey suggest that the Point Hope settlement dates back to the 

 first or second centuries A, D. In view of its iron-age connections 

 this would be the earliest possible date for Ipiutak. It is difficult to 

 see how such a culture, stemming directly from the Siberian iron age. 



