436 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1950 



ments, the throwing board and bird dart, himps, pottery vessels, 

 needle cases, and chipped-stone and rubbed-slate implements. These 

 elements constitute the core of the Old Bering Sea and Birnirk cul- 

 tures. Some of them — the square underground house, the throwing 

 board, pottery, and chipped-stone implements — are also widely dis- 

 tributed in America but are equally widespread and of greater an- 

 tiquity in Eurasia. The others are all deep-rooted elements of Old 

 World culture that in America are found only among the Eskimos or 

 in contiguous areas where Eskimo influence has probably extended. 

 On the basis of the original Alaskan excavations, therefore, it seemed 

 only reasonable to conclude that the roots of Eskimo culture were to 

 be sought in Eurasia and not America.^ 



The discovery of the spectacular Ipiutak culture at Point Hope, 

 Alaska, enables us to proceed beyond the demonstration of a general 

 Eskimo-Old World relationship and to point to more specific 

 connections. 



One of the most striking features of the Ipiutak culture is the great 

 number of chipped-stone implements, especially small, thin, lanceolate 

 arrowpoints; rubbed-slate blades are. entirely absent. The Ipiutak 

 flint complex resembles those of the other early Eskimo cultures — Old 

 Bering Sea, Kachemak Bay. Aleutian, and Dorset — in having an 

 abundance of chipped-stone implements, whereas the later cultures 

 all show a preponderance of rubbed-slate ; likewise a number of specific 

 Ipiutak types are shared with the cultures mentioned. Small, finely 

 chipped arrowpoints like those from Ipiutak are also found in Eu- 

 rasia. They have been described from old sites in Kamchatka and the 

 Kurile Islands and are among the most characteristic features of a 

 widespread Neolithic complex extending from Mongolia and the 

 Baikal region to the Ural Mountains. The aiTowpoints illustrated 

 by Prokoshev (1940, pi. 3, figs. 9-14) , from the Astrakhan site on Lake 

 Griaznoe, near the confluence of the Chusov and Kama Rivers on the 

 west slope of the Urals, are particularly close to the Ipiutak forms. 



The excavations of the Russian archeologist A. P. Okladnikov 

 have supplied what has long been needed, an analysis and descrip- 

 tion of the various stages of the Siberian Neolithic (Okladni- 

 kov, 1938, summarized by Collins, 1943). On the basis of excavation 

 of graves and habitation sites on the Angara River and elsewhere 

 around Lake Baikal, Okladnikov recognizes six culture stages pre- 

 ceding the iron age. The early inhabitants of the Baikal region are 

 described as hunters, fishers, and food gatherers who lived in settle- 

 ments along the lakes and rivers. Their mode of life represented a 

 continuation from the upper Paleolithic of the same region, but the 



* Gjessing (1944), approaching the problem from the opposite direction— the stone-age cultures of northern 

 Eurasia— arrived at the same conclusion, quite Independently and Without knowledge of the Alaskan 

 excavations or the conclusions that had been drawn therefrom. 



