762 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1895. 



weather. Where these are both wanting, shell heaps are never found, 

 and rarely when either is absent." 



From careful examinations made by Mr. Dall, he deems it proba- 

 ble that the islands "were ])opulated at a very distant period; that the 

 population entered the chain from the eastward; that they were, when 

 first settled on the islands, in a very different condition from that in 

 which they were found by the first civilized travelers," etc. It is 

 furthermore suggested by this writer that there was a later wave of 

 population; that the former people "were more similar to the lowest 

 grades of Innuit (so-called Eskimo) than to the Aleuts of the historic 

 period," and that the stratification of the shell heaps shows a tolerably 

 uniform division into three stages, characterized by the food which 

 formed their staple of subsistence and by the weapons for obtaining 

 as well as the utensils for preparing the food. 



The stages are — 

 I. The littoral period, represented by the Echinus layer. 

 II. The fishing period, represented by the Fishbone layer. 



III. The hunting period, represented by the Mammalian layer. 



In concluding his impressions respecting the shell heaps, the author 

 concludes by saying " that those strata correspond approximately to 

 actual stages in the development of the population which formed them, 

 so that their contents may approximately, within limits, be taken as 

 indicative of the condition of that population at the times when the 

 respective strata were being deposited." 



PREHISTORIC ART. 



With reference to specimens of art or ornament, Mr. Dall ' remarks : 



The expression of ;estlietic' feeling, as indicated by attempts at orniimentation of 

 ntensils or weapons or by the fabrication of articles wliich serve only for purposes 

 of adornment, is remarkably absent in the contents of the shell heaps. As a whole, 

 this feeling became developed only at the period directly anterior to the historic 

 period. It was doubtless exhibited in numerous ways, of which no preservation 

 was possible, so that the early record, even for a considerable period, would be very 

 incomplete. We know that great taste and delicate handiwork were (expended on 

 articles of clothing and manufactures of grass fiber, which would be entirely 

 destroyed in the shell heaps, and of which only fragmentary remains have been 

 preserved on the mummies found in the latest prehistoric burial caves and rock 

 shelters. « * * 



There are some articles used on the kyak which are usually made of bone, and 

 often preserved in the upper mammalian stratum, and upon which some attempts at 

 ornamentation were bestowed. These are little ]>ieces of bone or ivory, in general 

 shape resembling a kneeling figure, with one or two holes, through which cords are 

 passed. ^ * * f he latter were in some cases carved to represent figures of ani- 

 mals. Another species of ornamentation is elsewhere alluded to in the flat thin 

 strips of bone which were fastened to the wooden visor worn in hunting. These 

 were frequently ornamented with typically Innuit patterns of parallel lines, dots, 

 concentric circles, with zigzag markings between them and radiating lines. All 



'On succession in the shell heaps of the Aleutian Islands, in Contributions to North 

 American Ethnology, I, 1877, p. 43. 



