PREHISTORIC ART OF THE ALASKAN ESKIMO 



By henry B. COLLINS, JR., 

 assistant curator, division of ethnology, u. s. national museum 



(With 24 Plates) 



INTRODUCTION 



Until very recently information on the archeology of the American 

 Arctic was limited practically to the descriptions by Wissler* and 

 Boas ^ of a relatively small number of specimens collected by 

 Stefansson, Comer, and others from northern Alaska, the Hudson 

 Bay region, and northwest Greenland. The first systematic excava- 

 tions in the eastern regions were those made in Baffin Land, Melville 

 Peninsula, and northwest Greenland by Therkel Mathiassen for the 

 Fifth Thule Expedition from 1922 to 1924. The publication in 1927 

 of the results of these important investigations afforded for the first 

 time an adequate view of the archeology of a large section of Arctic 

 America.' This work verified the conclusions of Boas and Wissler that 

 in earlier times there had been a closer similarity between the Eskimo 

 cultures of Alaska and the eastern regions than exists at present. 

 Mathiassen, however, with a much larger mass of material system- 

 aticaJly excavated at a number of widely scattered sites, was able to 

 go further and show that the similarities were so numerous and strik- 

 ing that the Thule culture, the name he gave to the ancient eastern 

 culture, must have had its origin in Alaska. 



In 1926 Dr. Ales Hrdlicka made an anthropological survey of the 

 Alaskan Coast from Norton Sound to Point Barrow * and in the same 

 year Mr. Diamond Jenness inaugurated archeological work in the 

 Bering Sea region by excavating at Cape Prince of Wales and on the 



^ Wissler, Clark, Harpoons and Darts in the Stefansson Collection. Anthrop. 

 Papers Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., Vol. XIV, Part II, 1916. 



Wissler, Qark, Archeology of the Polar Eskimo. Anthrop. Papers Amer. 

 Mus. Nat. Hist., Vol. XXII, Part III, 1918. 



^ Boas, Franz, The Eskimo of Baffin Land and Hudson Bay. Bull. Amer. Mus. 

 Nat. Hist., Vol. XV, Part I, 1901 ; Part II, 1907. 



'Archeology of the Central Eskimos. Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition, 

 1921-24. The Danish Expedition to Arctic North America in Charge of Knud 

 Rasmussen, Ph. D., Vol. IV, Parts i and 2, Copenhagen, 1927. 



^ Anthropological Work in Alaska. Smithsonian Misc. Coll., Vol. 78, No. 7, 

 pp. 137-158, 1927. 



Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections. Vol. 81. No. 14 



