246  SMITHSONIAN    MISCELLANEOUS    COLLECTIONS  VOL.    96 
used  for  both  warp  and  weft  and  the  texture  was  semi-stifif  very  much  like  that 
of  bags  of  the  Klamath-Modoc  of  northeast  California  and  Oregon,  made  of 
tule  rush.  It  is  like  the  Klamath-Modoc  twining  also  in  the  fact  that  the  warp 
is  double-twisted,  a  characteristic  not  found  either  in  the  rest  of  modern  work 
along  the  coast  or  in  modern  Eskimo  twining. 
There  are  a  few  horizontal  rows  of  decorative  stitching  of  an  elementary 
kind,  involving  the  introduction  of  one  dark-colored  weft  thread  instead  of 
the  natural. 
It  is  interesting  to  notice  by  way  of  comparison  that  O.  T.  Mason,  "Aboriginal 
American  Basketry  ",  pp.  397-8,  comments  on  Asiatic  twined  bags.  While  the 
Chukchi  example  he  mentions  is  like  the  Bering  Strait  modern  Eskimo  work, 
the  wallet  from  Kamchatka  resembles  your  specimen  according  to  his  comment 
in  that  it  has  a  coarse  hemp  cord  warp  (which  would  undoubtedly  refer  to  the 
double-twisted  type  of  warp). 
Skeletal  Remains 
Although  careful  search  was  made  for  early  burials  on  the  top  and 
along  the  slopes  of  the  mountain,  no  traces  of  these  were  found.  There 
are  large  numbers  of  recent  burials  among  the  rocks  on  the  mountain 
slope,  and  it  was  here  for  the  most  part  that  Dr.  Riley  D.  Moore  ob- 
tained his  extensive  collection  of  skulls  and  skeletons  in  1912.  How- 
ever, neither  at  Gambell  nor  elsewhere  on  St.  Lawrence  Island  have 
I  ever  found  burials  which  from  the  accompanying  grave  offerings 
could  be  identified  as  of  Punuk  or  Old  Bering  Sea  age.  If,  as  seems 
probable,  the  prehistoric  St.  Lawrence  Eskimos  followed  the  usual 
practice  of  simply  placing  the  body  among  the  rocks,  either  on  a  flat 
surface  or  in  a  natural  crevice,  it  is  easy  to  understand  why  no  skeletal 
remains  of  any  antiquity  have  been  found,  since  in  this  method  of 
burial  the  bones  very  soon  become  scattered  and  broken.  Fortunately, 
a  sufficient  number  of  crania  from  houses  and  middens  of  Punuk  age, 
both  at  Gambell  and  the  eastern  end  of  the  island,  have  been  collected 
to  indicate  with  some  degree  of  certainty  the  physical  type  that  was 
associated  with  the  Punuk  culture.  The  measurements  will  not  be 
given  here  as  they  are  to  be  included  in  the  next  issue  of  Dr.  Hrd- 
licka's  Catalog  of  Crania.  However,  the  essential  point  for  the  present 
is  that  in  general  they  conform  to  the  modern  St.  Lawrence  type, 
which  is  mesocephalic. 
Unfortunately,  the  excavations  at  the  oldest  sites  have  yielded  very 
little  skeletal  material,  only  two  incomplete  skeletons  and  a  detached 
skull  found  at  Miyowagh.  Of  these,  the  skeleton  found  in  cut  9  a, 
back  of  house  no.  3,  had  a  skull  that  was  mesocephalic.  The  other  two 
skulls,  found  in  the  Old  Bering  Sea  house  at  Miyowagh  (house  no. 
4),   were  extremely  dolichocephalic,   falling  in  this   respect  beyond 
