NO. 14 PREHISTORIC ART OF ALASKAN ESKIMO COLLINS 4I 



to the Van Valin collection it is seen that the decorated artifacts from 

 the Point Barrow region are of the type illustrated here on plates i to 

 8. More important than the decorative art in this instance, however, 

 is the presence of a certain form of harpoon head, called by Mathiassen 

 the Birnirk type, which appears to be characteristic of the oldest sites 

 around Point Barrow, These harpoon heads have open shaft sockets 

 and rectangular slots for lashing, but the features that most strikingly 

 set them apart are one or more side blades of stone and two or more 

 obliquely placed terminal barbs. At Birnirk, which from Stefansson's 

 other data is regarded as the most ancient of the sites about Point 

 Barrow, this harpoon head is the dominant type ; at Cape Smythe, 

 the next oldest site, it is also found but in association with later forms 

 of harpoon heads and other artifacts ; at the site of the modern Point 

 Barrow village it is rarely found. Mathiassen considers that the Van 

 Valin collection from near Point Barrow represents a still earlier 

 period. 



Jenness does not mention finding true Birnirk heads at Wales or 

 the Diomedes, but in a plate illustrating the evolution of the harpoon 

 head in northern Alaska he places it as the oldest form.' The finds at 

 Punuk Island and Cape Kialegak bear out this interpretation, though 

 in a somewhat indirect manner. I was not so fortunate as to obtain 

 a direct sequence of harpoon types at either of these sites except that 

 the modern closed socket harpoon head was found invariably re- 

 stricted to modern ruins and the upper levels of the later Kialegak 

 midden. Comparatively few Birnirk type heads were found, but it is 

 significant that all of these came from the lower levels of the middens. 

 It is also of interest to note that, while the great majority of the har- 

 poon heads from these two sites were of ivory, only one of the 

 Birnirk type was of this material, the others being of bone ; and 

 further that the only other bone harpoon heads found were very thin 

 open socketed forms, with no blade slit and usually with an irregular or 

 obliquely placed terminal barb, features all suggestive of the Birnirk 

 heads, lacking only the side blades and the bifurcated or trifurcated 

 barb. Of three Birnirk type heads purchased at Gambell two were 

 of bone and one of ivory. It appears, therefore, that we have here a 

 fairly definite association between material and form, the Birnirk and 

 a possible immediate derivitive type being of bone. The presence of 

 these bone harpoon heads, restricted to the lower levels of sites yield- 

 ing otherwise only those of ivory may be regarded as presumptive evi- 

 dence in favor of their being one of the oldest if not the oldest type of 



*Ann. Rep. for 1926, Nat. Mus., Canada, pi. XII. 



