26  SMITHSONIAN    MISCELLANEOUS    COLLECTIONS  VOL.    96 
vestigations,  excavating  at  the  old  sites  around  Gambell.  at  the  north- 
western end  of  the  island. 
Such,  in  brief,  is  the  historical  background  of  St.  Lawrence  Island. 
It  remains  today  one  of  the  least  known  sections  of  Alaska,  with  its 
shores  still  imperfectly  charted  and  most  of  the  interior  unexplored. 
It  is  visited  each  year  by  the  Revenue  Cutter,  the  Bureau  of  Indian 
Affairs  ship,  and  several  trading  vessels  ;  but  there  are  no  white  traders 
or  other  settlers  on  the  island,  the  only  white  residents  being  the 
teachers  in  charge  of  the  native  schools  at  ( iambell  and  Savunga. 
ABANDONED  SITES,  AND  EXCAVATIONS  OF  1928  AND  1929 
Scattered  along  the  coasts  of  St.  Lawrence,  not  only  in  the  vicinity 
of  the  present  settlements  but  also  at  the  now  abandoned  eastern  end 
of  the  island,  are  numerous  old  village  sites  and  kitchen  middens. 
Some  of  the  latter  are  of  great  size,  probably  larger  than  any  others 
in  the  Eskimo  region,  and  yet  strangely  enough  there  seems  to  have 
been  no  printed  reference  to  them  and  no  general  knowledge  of  their 
existence  prior  to  Dr.  Hrdlicka's  brief  visit  to  the  island  in  1926, 
when  he  learned  of  the  important  old  site  of  Kukuliak  on  the  north 
coast,  and  of  Punuk  Island,  just  off  the  east  end  of  St.  Lawrence. 
We  now  know  of  a  number  of  other  old  sites,  the  locations  of  which 
are  given  below. 
At  the  southwestern  end  of  St.  Lawrence  are  several  large  kitchen 
middens  that  I  have  not  visited  and  between  there  and  Gambell  at 
least  one  important  abandoned  site,  Kitneapalok,  at  which  preliminary 
excavations  were  made  by  Moreau  B.  Chambers  in  193 1.  Plate  i, 
figure  I,  is  a  view  of  one  of  the  two  middens  at  Kitneapalok.  In 
plate  I,  figure  2,  are  shown  two  rows  of  "jumping  stones"  at  a 
small  abandoned  village  site  between  Kitneapalok  and  Gambell.  Rows 
of  stones  similar  to  these  are  found  at  various  other  localities  on 
St.  Lawrence  Island.  The  present  Eskimos  say  that  they  were  made 
by  their  ancestors  and  used  in  jumping  exercises  designed  to  increase 
their  endurance  and  skill.  Stone  rows  of  this  kind,  called  nangissat, 
are  well  known  in  Greenland  but  have  not  been  reported  from  other 
parts  of  the  Eskimo  territory. 
At  Gambell,  within  a  radius  of  three-quarters  of  a  mile  from  the 
present  village,  are  five  abandoned  sites.  It  was  here  that  the  Smith- 
sonian excavations  of  1930  and  193 1  were  conducted,  the  results  of 
which  form  the  principal  basis  of  the  present  paper.  Briefer  accounts 
of  the  Gambell  excavations,  with  an  outline  of  the  chronology  as 
indicated  principally  by  changing  styles  in  art  and  harpoon  heads, 
were  pubHshed  by  the  writer  in  193 1,  1932,  and  1935.   Although  none 
