NO.    I  ARCHEOLOGY    OF    ST.    LAWRENCE    ISLAND COLLINS  29 
Jenness  and  Hrdlicka.  But  the  ornamentation  was  strikingly  different. 
Instead  of  the  elaborate  designs  composed  of  flowing  curving  lines 
and  elevated  concentric  circles  and  ellipses  characteristic  of  the  Ber- 
ing Sea  culture,  we  found  a  much  simpler  style  of  art.  The  lines  were 
fewer  in  number  and  were  either  straight  or  only  slightly  curved ;  they 
were  also  deeply  and  evenly  incised,  as  if  with  metal  tools ;  the  circles 
were  flat  and  perfectly  round,  having  been  inscribed  with  a  bit  or 
compasses,  whereas  the  Bering  Sea  circles  were  all  somewhat  irregu- 
lar, having  been  made  free  hand ;  dots  were  also  used,  either  detached 
or  placed  at  the  ends  of  straight  lines.  More  than  a  hundred  artifacts 
decorated  in  this  simplified  form  of  art,  which  I  called  the  Punuk 
style,  were  excavated  from  the  midden,  as  compared  with  three  decor- 
ated in  the  Old  Bering  Sea  style,*  but  it  was  significant  that  the  latter 
were  all  found  at  considerable  depths. 
Having  heard  from  our  Eskimo  workmen  of  a  large  kitchen  midden 
35  miles  away  at  Cape  Kialegak,  on  the  southeastern  end  of  St.  Law- 
rence, I  went  over  with  them  in  a  whale  boat  to  make  a  brief  exami- 
nation of  the  site.  Two  middens  were  found  at  Kialegak,  the  prin- 
cipal one  of  which  proved  to  be  even  larger  than  that  on  Punuk,  having 
a  total  depth,  or  height,  of  i8  feet  (pi.  3,  figs,  i,  2).  The  smaller  mid- 
den about  300  yards  away,  was  about  8  feet  deep  (pi.  3,  fig.  3) .  In  the 
one  day  spent  at  Kialegak  I  was  able  to  obtain  a  small  but  representa- 
tive lot  of  material  including  a  number  of  objects  decorated  in  the 
Punuk  style  and  one  harpoon  head  from  near  the  exposed  base  of 
the  larger  midden  decorated  in  the  Old  Bering  Sea  style.  Conditions 
at  Kialegak  appeared  so  promising  that  I  decided  upon  it  as  the  scene 
of  the  next  year's  excavations. 
As  a  result  of  the  2  months'  work  on  Punuk  Island  and  the  brief 
trip  to  Cape  Kialegak,  a  collection  of  several  thousand  artifacts  was 
obtained  which  illustrated  in  considerable  detail  a  prehistoric  phase 
of  Eskimo  culture  which  had  intervened  between  the  Old  Bering  Sea 
culture  and  the  modern.  Although  this  intermediate,  or  Punuk  cul- 
ture, was  undoubtedly  prehistoric,  it  also  knew  the  use  of  metal.  It 
is  true  that  all  of  the  cutting  implements — knife  blades,  adzes,  harpoon 
blades,  etc. — found  in  the  Punuk  midden  were  made  of  stone,  but 
the  fact  that  the  deeply  and  evenly  incised  lines  and  the  mechanically 
perfect  circles  of  Punuk  art  could  only  have  been  produced  with 
metal  tools  indicated  that  these  must  have  been  employed  to  some 
'The  limiting  adjective  "Old"  has  been  added  to  Jenness'  "Bering  Sea" 
culture  in  order  to  set  it  apart  from  the  later  stages  of  culture  in  the  Bering 
Sea  region. 
