f 



NO. 14 PREHISTORIC ART OF ALASKAN ESKIMO — COLLINS 3 



Jenness has described some of the archeological material which he 

 collected at Cape Prince of Wales and on the Little Diomede as rep- 

 resentative of what he has called the Bering Sea culture, and this 

 designation will be followed in the present paper. Hrdlicka, in a 

 publication now in press, has also described the specimens he obtained 

 in 1926. In addition, Mathiassen has recently published a description 

 of several examples of the Bering Sea art which were in the collections 

 of the Museum of the American Indian and in the National Museum 

 at Copenhagen.'' To Dr. George G. MacCurdy, however, belongs the 

 credit for first calling attention to this unique style of Eskimo art 

 some years before any archeological work had been done around 

 Bering Strait and when there was no material with which to compare 

 the single specimen that he found in the American Museum of Natu- 

 ral History.^ This was an ivory object, identified as a whip handle," 

 and bearing a decoration so different from anything known to the 

 Eskimo that Dr. MacCurdy published a brief description of it in the 

 American Anthropologist. In all, probably 30 objects showing the old 

 Bering Sea decoration have been illustrated and described. Other 

 examples of it are in various museums and private collections, and 

 some of these will be described in the following pages. 



OBJECTS REPRESENTATIVE OF THE OLD BERING 

 SEA CULTURE 



It will be understood that all of the objects to be described are of 

 walrus ivory unless otherwise stated. In color they range from cream, 

 through buff and brown, to a dark green or even black. This dis- 

 coloration has resulted from the ivory having remained buried in the 

 frozen ground for many years. An occasional artifact was shaped 

 from a piece of mammoth ivory or old walrus tusk that had been 

 washed up by the waves, but most of them were carved from the 

 fresh walrus ivory and have since taken on their rich coloring. 



On plate i are shown four harpoon heads embodying the features 

 which may be regarded as typical of the most highly developed and 

 apparently the oldest phase of the ancient Bering Sea art. 



Plate I, a-b, is an exceptionally fine harpoon head owned by Messrs. 

 Wilfred and Albert Berry of Seattle. Its provenience is not known 

 except that it came from northern Alaska. 



' Mathiassen, Therkel, Some Specimens from tlie Bering Sea Culture. Indian 

 Notes, Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, Vol. 6, No. i, pp. 33- 

 56, January, 1929. 



^An Example of Eskimo Art, Amer. Anthrop., Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 384-385, 

 1921. 



^This appears, however, to be an adz handle. Cf. Mathiassen, 1929, p. 41. 



