ARCHEOLOGY  OF  ST.  LAWRENCE  ISLAND,  ALASKA 
By  henry  B.  COLLINS,  JR. 
Dk'ision  of  Ethnology,  U.  S.  National  Museum 
(With  84  Plates) 
INTRODUCTION 
As  the  northernmost  people  of  the  world,  the  Eskimos  have  long 
been  a  subject  of  popular  and  scientific  interest.  This  has  fortunately 
resulted  in  a  number  of  careful  studies  which  have  provided  a  great 
amount  of  detailed  information  on  many  aspects  of  contemporary 
Eskimo  culture.  From  the  works  of  such  authors  as  Egede,  Cranz, 
Rink,  Boas,  Murdoch,  Nelson,  Steensby,  Holm,  Thalbitzer,  Stefans- 
son,  Jenness,  Rasmussen,  Birket-Smith  and  Mathiassen — to  name 
only  a  few  of  those  who  have  made  notable  contributions  to  the  sub- 
ject— the  modern  Eskimos  are  perhaps  as  well  known  as  any  other 
group  of  primitive  peoples.  Prior  to  Mathiassen's  investigations  of 
1922  and  1923,  however,  there  had  been  no  intensive  or  systemaitic 
excavations  of  old  Eskimo  sites  ;  consequently,  it  was  not  until  recently 
that  the  data  aflforded  by  archeology  could  be  utilized^  in  theoretical 
discussions  of  the  origin  of  the  Eskimo  and  his  peculiar  form  of 
culture. 
One  of  the  first  to  express  an  opinion  on  this  subject  was  the  Danish 
missionary  Cranz,  who  in  1770  advanced  the  theory  that  the  Eskimos 
were  originally  an  Asiatic  people,  related  to  the  Kalmuks  and  other 
tribes  of  central  and  northeastern  Asia.  Pushed  northward  by  the 
pressure  of  neighboring  tribes,  they  migrated  into  northeastern  Siberia, 
crossed  Bering  Strait  into  Alaska,  and  continuing  eastward,  eventu- 
ally reached  Greenland  in  the  fourteenth  century  A.  D.  Markham 
also  sought  the  origin  of  the  Eskimo  in  Asia,  along  the  northern  coasts 
of  Siberia.  According  to  Markham  (1865)  the  Eskimos  had  formerly 
lived  along  the  Arctic  coast  in  northeastern  Siberia  but  were  forced 
to  migrate  when,  during  one  of  the  periods  of  political  unrest  in  central 
Asia,  they  were  subjected  to  pressure  from  the  southward.  Markham, 
like  Wrangell  and  Nordenskiold,  saw  evidence  of  such  a  former  Es- 
kimo population  in  the  ruins  of  underground  houses  on  the  Arctic 
coast  from  Chaun  Bay  to  Bering  Strait,  and  in  certain  Chukchee  tradi- 
Smithsonian  Miscellaneous  Collections,  Vol.  96,  No.  1 
I 
