252  SMITHSONIAN    MISCELLANEOUS    COLLECTIONS  VOL.    96 
Gambell  in  several  respects  were  especially  propitious  for  the  elucida- 
tion of  cultural  sequences.  For  though  the  combined  depths  of  the 
five  middens  amounted  to  more  than  24  feet,  the  fact  that  the  middens 
were  separated  enabled  us  in  one  season  and  in  spite  of  the  frozen 
ground  to  excavate  to  the  bottom  of  each  of  them  at  a  number  of 
places ;  whereas  this  would  not  have  been  possible  if  they  had  been 
superimposed,  forming  a  huge  accumulation  such  as  the  16-  or  20-foot 
middens  on  Punuk  Island  and  at  Kukuliak.  Furthermore,  the  middens 
at  Gambell  represented  villages  of  different  ages  which  had  been 
abandoned  one  after  the  other ;  their  positions  in  relation  to  the  old 
shore  lines  ofifered  preliminary  evidence  of  this  succession,  which  was 
fully  borne  out  by  the  material  excavated  from  them.  Most  fortunate 
of  all,  however,  was  the  fact  that  two  of  the  middens  proved  to  be 
pure  sites.  The  discovery  of  the  Hillside  site,  the  presence  of  which 
had  been  unknown  to  the  local  Eskimos,  removed  one  of  the  principal 
desiderata  of  Alaskan  archeology,  for  it  revealed  the  first  pure  site 
of  the  Old  Bering  Sea  culture,  a  site  that  had  been  established  and 
abandoned  during  the  period  in  which  this  old  Eskimo  culture  was 
flourishing  around  Bering  Strait.  The  larger  site,  Miyowagh,  pro- 
vided further  and  fuller  information  concerning  the  Old  Bering  Sea 
culture  and  also  of  the  transitional  stage  that  carried  it  into  the  Punuk. 
The  next  site,  levoghiyoq,  was  found  to  be  a  pure  site  of  the  fully 
developed  Punuk  culture,  with  no  trace  of  Old  Bering  Sea  art  or  har- 
poon heads.  Seklowaghyaget  seems  to  have  been  established  about 
the  same  time  as  levoghiyoq,  but  it  was  occupied  for  a  longer  period, 
having  been  abandoned  probably  around  200  years  ago.  The  last  site, 
the  old  section  of  Gambell,  represents  a  still  later  stage  and  brings 
us  up  to  the  nineteenth  century. 
It  seems  natural  to  suppose  that  the  first  permanent  settlement  on 
St.  Lawrence  Island  should  have  been  established  here  at  the  north- 
western extremity  of  the  island,  the  point  of  land  that  most  closely 
approaches  the  Siberian  shore,  only  40  miles  away.  We  may  there- 
fore visualize  the  first  of  the  St.  Lawrence  Eskimos  as  coming  over 
in  their  umiaks  from  somewhere  in  the  vicinity  of  Indian  Point  and 
establishing  their  village — the  Hillside  site — on  the  western  slope 
of  the  Gambell  cape.  It  would  seem  safe  to  assume,  however,  that 
at  that  time  the  sea  was  much  nearer  the  foot  of  the  plateau  and  that 
the  present  extensive  gravel  spit  had  not  been  fully  formed ;  for  a 
village  would  hardly  have  been  established  at  this  site  if  the  sea  had 
been  then,  as  now,  three-quarters  of  a  mile  and  a  half  a  mile  away. 
There  were  many  natural  advantages  here  for  a  permanent  settle- 
ment :  both  the  west  and  north  shores  of  the  island  for  hunting  and 
