ANCIENT CULTURE OF ST. LAWRENCE ISLAND, 



ALASKA 



By HENRY B. COLLINS, JR., 

 Assistant Curator, Division of Ethnology, U. S. National Museum 



On May 13 Mr. J. A. Ford and I sailed from Seattle on the Coast 

 Guard Cutter Northland for the purpose of conducting archeological 

 investigations on St. Lawrence Island, near Bering Strait. This was 

 my third consecutive cruise on the Northland and again I wish to thank 

 Capt. E. D. Jones and the officers and men of the ship, especially 

 Lieut. Comdr. N. R. Stiles, and Mr. H. Berg, for the many courtesies 

 shown us. 



In 1928 and 1929 my excavations on Punuk and St. Lawrence 

 Islands had revealed the existence of a prehistoric phase of Eskimo 

 culture ancestral to the modern in that region and derived apparently 

 from a still earlier phase, the only evidence of which was a few elabo- 

 rately decorated artifacts of walrus ivory that had been found at 

 various old sites in the vicinity of Bering Strait. This oldest phase of 

 Alaskan Eskimo culture, the Old Bering Sea culture, appears to be the 

 oldest that has been found anywhere in the Eskimo regions. It also 

 possessed an art richer and more complex than that of any later Arctic 

 culture. The intermediate or Punuk stage showed similar implement 

 types, but the decorative designs, while they bore sufficient resem- 

 blances to those of the Old Bering Sea culture to warrant the assump- 

 tion that they had been derived therefrom, had become less flowing and 

 profuse and had taken on a rigidity more like that of modern Eskimo 

 art. 1 



While such a development of Alaskan Eskimo culture seemed cer- 

 tainly to have taken place, much of the evidence was of an indirect 

 nature, for at the sites excavated in 1928 and 1929 I had found an 

 abundance of the Punuk art but hardly more than traces of that of 

 the Old Bering Sea period — not enough to afford evidence of the exact 

 relationship at these particular sites of the two old art styles. It was 

 very desirable, therefore, to find some old site at which occurred 



1 The Ancient Eskimo Culture of Northwestern Alaska. Explorations and 

 Field-Work of the Smithsonian Institution in 1928, pp. 141-150, 1929. 



Prehistoric Eskimo Culture of Alaska. Explorations and Field-Work of 

 the Smithsonian Institution in 1929, pp. 147-156, 1930. 



Prehistoric Art of the Alaskan Eskimo. Smithsonian Misc. Coll., Vol. 81, 

 No. 14, 1929. 



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