l6 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 8l 



modern types of artifacts of ivory, bone and wood, identical to those 

 still being- used on St. Lawrence or having been used there in recent 

 years. At the old village, however, among the several thousand 

 specimens excavated, there were only four small fragments of iron 

 and two glass beads, although every inch of the soil was gone over 

 with trowels. There was likewise not a single modern type closed 

 socket harpoon head found, and the blades of the harpoons, lances, 

 knives and adzes were all of slate. However, the presence of even 

 these few pieces of iron and, more significant even, an occasional file 

 mark on some of the specimens, indicates that at least during the 

 later years of their stay on the island the people of the Punuk village 

 were in possession of small quantities of European metal. 



Late in July, I made a brief trip in an Eskimo whale boat to Cape 

 Kialegak on the southeastern end of St. Lawrence Island where there 

 was a deserted village with a kitchen midden even higher than the 

 one at Punuk. The Kialegak people had occupied two villages ; the 

 older and smaller village was entirely prehistoric, judging from the 

 objects dug from the midden, while the later and more extensive 

 settlement only a few hundred yards distant had been established ap- 

 parently at about the time of the abandonment of the earlier village 

 and occupied until about 40 years ago. Proof of this was found in the 

 midden, the lower levels of which yielded only ancient types of arti- 

 facts, including harpoon heads with open sockets and some with side 

 blades, while in the upper levels, beginning at about 10 feet, were 

 implements of the modern type accompanied by glass beads and nu- 

 merous pieces of iron. The objects from the lower levels of the later 

 village and all of those from the older site were of the types we had 

 been finding at the old Punuk village. Cape Kialegak thus afforded 

 valuable supplementary evidence, for the occupancy of the later vil- 

 lage began at a period contemporaneous with Punuk but continued 

 without break until recent years, whereas the old village on Punuk 

 was abandoned at some unknown time within the proto-historic period 

 and was succeeded, perhaps after a considerable interval, by the few 

 recent houses at the end of the island. 



This will serve as an outline of the conditions under which the 

 specimens to be described were found and removed, and no further 

 details of the procedure will be entered into at this time. Instead, 

 discussion will be limited, with a few necessary exceptions, to the 

 decorative designs on the objects themselves, to their relation with 

 those previously described and those of the modern Eskimo, and to the 

 bearing that they are believed to have on the larger problem of the 



