270  SMITHSONIAN    MISCELLANEOUS    COLLECTIONS  VOL.    96 
The  typical  form  of  dwelling  of  the  maritime  Chukchee  and  Si- 
berian Eskimo  is  the  skin-covered,  house  like  the  type  now  in  use 
on  St.  Lawrence  Island.  An  antecedent  form  in  northeastern  Siberia, 
however,  was  the  semisubterranean  whale  bone  house  which  passed 
out  of  general  use  there  several  generations  before  it  did  on  St.  Law- 
rence Island.  Bogoras  (1904-09,  pp.  181,  182)  has  given  the  best 
description  of  one  of  these  whale  bone  houses,  located  at  Nunligren  on 
the  south  coast  of  the  Chukchee  Peninsula. 
This  house  appears  to  be  of  the  same  general  type  as  that  which 
we  found  to  be  the  last  of  the  prehistoric  forms  on  St.  Lawrence 
Island — square  to  rectangular,  semisubterranean,  with  walls  of  up- 
right timbers  and  whale  bones  and  roof  of  similar  material  supported 
by  uprights.  It  differs  from  the  St.  Lawrence  examples  in  having  an 
entrance  in  the  upper  part  of  the  wall  in  addition  to  the  underground 
passage,  in  a  different  arrangement  of  the  upright  roof  supports,  and 
in  the  absence  of  a  wooden  floor ;  alsp,  to  judge  from  the  illustrations 
(Bogoras,  pi.  18,  figs.  2,  3),  the  roof  is  constructed  more  in  the  ir- 
regular fashion  of  the  underground  St.  Lawrence  caches  than  of  the 
dwellings. 
Until  the  much  needed  archeological  investigations  are  made  in 
northeastern  Siberia,  the  history  of  the  whale  bone  house  there  must 
remain  in  doubt ;  in  view  of  the  series  of  prehistoric  house  types 
now  known  for  St.  Lawrence  Island,  it  may  be  expected  that  ex- 
cavations in  Siberia  will  reveal  forms  which  on  the  whole  will  be 
comparable. 
Mathiassen,  in  tracing  the  extent  of  the  whale  bone  house,  shows 
that  permanent  semisubterranean  dwellings  constructed  at  least  partly 
of  whale  bones  are  found  over  a  wide  stretch  of  the  Arctic  coast  of 
Siberia  where  the  present  form  of  dwelling  is  the  skin-covered 
tent  (1927,  vol.  2,  pp.  153-154).  The  earliest  reference  is  given  by 
Wrangell  (1840,  p.  372)  : 
There  are  traditions  which  relate  that  two  centuries  ago  the  Onkilon  occupied 
the  whole  of  the  coast  from  Cape  Schelagskoi  [Chaun  Bay]  to  Behring  Straits; 
and  it  is  true  that  there  are  everywhere  along  this  tract  the  remains  of  huts 
constructed  of  earth  and  whalebones,  and  quite  different  from  the  present 
dwellings  of  the  Tschuktschi. 
Nordenskiold  (1882,  pp.  334-336)  found  similar  ruins  at  Irkaipij, 
on  the  coast  between  Chaun  Bay  and  Kolutschin  Bay : 
We  saw  also  ruins,  viz.  the  remains  of  a  large  number  of  old  house-sites, 
which  belonged  to  a  race  called  Onkilon,  who  formerly  inhabited  these  regions, 
and  some  centuries  ago  were  driven  by  the  Chukches,  according  to  tradition,  to 
some  remote  islands  in  the  Polar  Sea The  houses  appear  to  have  been 
