Implements and Artefacts of the North-east Greenlanders. 



375 



DOCH refers to this explanation in connection with a set of 29 figures 

 strung upon a seal thong which he obtained at Plover Bay in Si- 

 beria^; Turner and Nelson, on the other hand, maintain that 

 figures similar in character from the Ungava district, Hudson Bay 

 Territory, and from St. Lawrence Island respectively, are there used 

 as toys only^\ 



The bone figures found in North-east Greenland and those obtained 

 by the Sverdrup Expedition are finer and somewhat more elegantly 

 made than those which occur more to the west. Regarding the 

 object of these figures nothing can be stated with certainty, but the 

 fact that both at Snenæs, at Rypefjeldet (cf. PI. XXV, 6—8, 10-12 

 and 14) and at Stenkuls Fjord they were found together with orna- 

 mental objects such as beads, pendants and small rings, makes it 

 probable that their main purpose was to serve as ornaments. 



The object illustrated in PI. XI, 1,^ must undoubtedly also be 

 included among the ornaments. In form it most resembles the 

 bone feathers at the butt end of certain Greenland harpoon shafts.^ 

 It must, however, be compared wùth an ornament found in an East 

 Greenland grave near Cape Franklin (about 78^4° N. lat.); the articles, 

 which were lying in a wooden bowl, included for instance an Ulo, 

 w^hich characterises the grave as that of a woman.' The Danmark 

 Expedition brought home one more specimen of this kind from Rype- 

 fjeldet (PL XXV, 19). Both 

 specimens are ornamented 

 with a dotted cruciform fi- 

 gure, the centre of which 

 coincides with the hole pier- 

 ced in the centre of the ob- 

 ject; the latter specimen has 

 in addition a circle of dots 

 around the central hole, and 

 two holes at its upper edge; 

 this last might also have 

 been the case in the specimen 

 from Snenæs, which is somewhat damaged above. The specimen 

 from Cape Franklin is more richly ornamented, the vertical arm of 

 the cross consisting of three, and the horizontal arm of two rows of 

 dots, while the edge is also decorated with a similar row; besides 

 the central hole we find here also an upper and a lower hole. Its 



^ Murdoch I, pp. 364— 65. = Turner, p. 200; Nelson, p. 342. з Mus. No. L. 3805. 

 * Cf. Mason 1, PI. 5. In early times these feathers were broader and shorter. 

 ^ Stolpe, pp. 104-5. Nathorst, p. 364. 



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