NO.    I  ARCHEOLOGY    OF    ST.    LAWRENCE    ISLAND COLLINS  3I 
at  the  opposite  or  northwestern  end  of  the  island.  In  1928  I  had 
purchased  from  our  Eskimo  workmen  a  small  collection  of  archeo- 
logical  material  from  Gambell,  and  later  in  the  season  had  stopped 
there  for  a  few  hours  and  examined  several  nearby  abandoned  sites 
with  Mr.  Geist,  who  had  been  excavating  at  the  old  site  of  Seklowag- 
hyaget,  just  back  of  the  present  village.  Mr.  Geist  very  kindly  showed 
me  the  material  he  had  obtained,  some  by  excavation  and  some  pur- 
chased from  the  Eskimos  who  were  engaged  in  desultory  digging 
for  specimens  and  old  ivory.  In  1929,  after  Mr.  Geist  had  discontinued 
work  at  Gambell  and  begun  to  excavate  at  Kukuliak,  40  miles  to 
the  eastward,  I  again  visited  the  site  and  purchased  another  collection 
of  artifacts.  From  examination  of  the  sites  themselves  and  the  material 
obtained  from  them,  it  became  apparent  that  the  Gambell  sites  were 
of  different  ages.  Thus,  Seklowaghyaget  seemed  to  belong  entirely 
to  the  Punuk  period,  whereas  from  Miyowagh,  three-quarters  of  a 
mile  away,  both  Punuk  and  Old  Bering  Sea  specimens  had  been  ex- 
cavated. Here  then  was  a  site  which  promised  to  yield  valuable  in- 
formation regarding  the  Old  Bering  Sea  culture,  and  it  was  accordingly 
selected  as  the  principal  objective  of  the  1930  investigations. 
EXCAVATIONS  AT  GAMBELL  (SEVUOKOK) 
Cape  Chibukak  (Sevuokok),  at  the  northwestern  end  of  St.  Law- 
rence Island,  is  a  steep-sided,  rocky  plateau  some  600  feet  in  height 
(pi.  4,  fig.  i).  Its  flat  summit,  several  miles  in  extent,  slopes  oft'  very 
gradually  to  the  east  and  south,  and  is  covered  with  tundra  and  rocks, 
the  latter  occurring  either  as  huge  outcrops  of  basalt,  more  or  less 
intact,  or  as  broken  down  masses  of  the  same  material  spread  out 
1931  and  further  excavated  by  him  in  1934.  It  was  situated  about  a  quarter 
of  a  mile  from  the  large  midden.  There  was  nothing  on  the  surface  to  indicate 
that  the  site  had  ever  been  occupied  and  Mr.  Geist  was  led  to  its  discovery  by 
finding  among  the  rocks  at  the  water's  edge  a  few  artifacts  and  pieces  of  ivory 
that  had  washed  down  from  the  bank  above.  In  September  1936,  when  I  was 
in  Fairbanks  returning  from  field-work  at  Bering  Strait,  Mr.  Geist  and  Dr. 
Froelich  Rainey  kindly  showed  me  the  St.  Lawrence  collections  including  the 
material  from  this  Punuk  site.  The  significant  point  with  regard  to  this  material 
is  that  some  of  the  objects  were  identical  in  form  with  some  which  I  had 
found  at  the  oldest  site  at  Gambell  in  1930.  There  were  a  great  many  decorated 
objects  in  the  collection  and  the  style  of  ornamentation  seemed  to  correspond 
in  some  degree  to  what  I  had  described  tentatively  as  Old  Bering  Sea  style  i 
(the  oldest  style,  as  outlined  in  the  following  pages  of  the  present  paper),  and 
was  even  closer  to  what  seemed  to  have  been  a  related  style  of  ornamentation 
characteristic  of  Little  Diomede  Island,  examples  of  which  are  also  described 
later. 
