NO.    I  ARCHEOLOGY    OF    ST.    L.WVRENCE    ISLAND — COLLINS  16/ 
clothing,  and  of  cooking.  From  the  Old  Bering  Sea  period  down  to 
modern  times  lamps  and  cooking  pots  on  St.  Lawrence  Island  have 
been  made  of  earthenware ;  steatite  and  sandstone  lamps,  snch  as  are 
used  by  the  modern  Eskimo  from  Bering  Strait  northward  and  east- 
ward did  not  reach  St.  Lawrence.  Considering  the  numbers  of  vessels 
that  must  have  been  used  and  their  fragile  nature,  it  is  not  surprising 
that  pottery  fragments  should  be  found  in  such  abundance  at  the  old 
sites.  Potsherds  were  by  far  the  most  numerous  of  all  artifacts  found 
at  the  Hillside  site  and  Miyowagh. 
Compared  with  that  from  other  parts  of  the  world,  Eskimo  pottery 
is  crude  and  poorly  made.  The  paste  is  coarse  and  rather  crumbly  in 
texture,  the  walls  of  the  vessels  are  usually  quite  thick,  the  surface 
finish  is  poor,  and  there  is  usually  no  decoration.  The  poor  quality 
of  the  ware  was  probably  due  in  large  part  to  the  absence  of  suitable 
clay,  although  a  contributing  factor  must  also  have  been  an  imperfect 
knowledge  of  the  technique  of  mixing,  shaping,  and  firing.  In  plate 
52  are  shown  the  various  types  of  ware  found  at  the  Hillside  site. 
Paste. — The  prevailing  color  of  the  paste  is  a  rich  sooty  black ; 
this  color,  with  but  few  exceptions,  is  uniform  throughout  the  thick- 
ness of  the  sherd,  showing  that  the  material  from  which  the  pottery 
was  made  was  originally  black  and  that  it  had  been  subjected  to  very 
little  firing ;  otherwise  the  surfaces  would  have  been  burned  to  a 
different  color.  In  a  few  instances  this  happened,  one  or  both  surfaces 
having  been  burned  to  a  light  buff  or  gray,  with  the  rest  of  the  paste 
remaining  black.  A  very  few  sherds,  like  plate  52,  figure  7,  are  light 
brown  in  color,  but  this  apparently  should  be  attributed  to  the  use 
of  a  brownish  clay  rather  than  to  intensive  firing. 
Temper. — The  tempering  material  most  commonly  used  was  coarse 
sand  and  gravel.  The  latter  seems  to  have  been  carelessly  selected, 
for  it  is  often  very  coarse,  containing  particles  up  to  the  size  of  a 
kidney  bean.  Such  coarse  tempering  material  could  not  have  been  very 
effective  as  a  binding  agent.  Fine  grass  was  also  used  for  tempering. 
The  small  grooves  left  by  the  grass  stems  and  even  the  carbonized 
stems  themselves  are  plainly  visible  on  sherds  which  have  weathered 
or  flaked  off  (pi.  52,  figs.  9,  10).  The  modern  Alaskan  Eskimo  are 
known  to  have  made  use  also  of  mammal  hair  in  tempering,  and  the 
present  material  has  a  superficial  resemblance  to  hair.  However, 
microscopic  examination  shows  plainly  that  it  was  grass.  The  sherds 
with  grass  tempering  are  appreciably  lighter  in  weight  than  those  in 
which  sand  and  gravel  had  been  used,  and  they  show  a  more  pro- 
nounced tendency  to  flake  oft"  in  layers.  I  have  found  no  instance  in 
which  both  methods  of  tempering  had  been  used  in  the  same  vessel. 
