NO.    I  ARCHEOLOGY    OF   ST.    LAWRENCE    ISLAND — COLLINS  297 
The  spurred  line  is  employed  in  this  part  of  Asia  in  much  the  same 
way  as  it  was  in  old  Scandinavian  art ;  in  both  cases  it  appears  as  a 
rather  incidental  part  of  a  more  elaborate  ornmentation,  to  which  it 
bears  no  intrinsic  relation.  One  has  the  feeling  that  it  is  an  old,  formal 
element,  so  fixed  in  the  minds  of  both  peoples  that  it  has  survived 
to  hold  a  place,  even  though  a  relatively  unimportant  one,  in  the  more 
sophisticated  ornamentation  that  came  into  use  later.  And  in  both 
cases,  the  more  developed  ornamentation  is  one  based  on  scrolls  and 
interwoven  ribbon  designs. 
As  far  as  I  am  aware,  the  only  instance  in  which  the  spurred  line 
and  alternating  spur  motives  are  found  on  the  Asiatic  mainland 
south  of  the  Amur  is  on  the  painted  pottery  of  the  Neolithic  Yang 
Shao  culture  of  northern  and  western  China  (Palmgren,  1934).  How- 
ever, the  general  ornamentation  on  these  vessels  is  so  unlike  anything 
else  known  from  China  and  so  close  to  the  form  of  ceramic  decora- 
tion prevailing  at  Anau  and  Tripolje  in  Turkestan  and  South  Russia 
that  it  seems  necessary  to  regard  it  as  part  of  a  cultural  complex  in- 
troduced into  China  from  these  regions.  If  we  disregard  the  Yang 
Shao  pottery,  therefore,  it  would  appear  from  the  geographical  dis- 
tribution that  the  simple  line  and  spur  ornamentation  which  stands 
out  so  prominently  in  the  art  of  northern  Eurasia  and  America  pene- 
trated only  to  a  slight  extent  into  eastern  Asia,  no  further  in  fact 
than  to  the  southernmost  of  the  Palae-Asiatic  peoples.  This  is  proba- 
bly to  be  explained  on  the  assumption  that  such  a  simple  "  barbarian  " 
design  would  have  little  appeal  to  a  people  like  the  Chinese,  who 
possessed  an  indigenous,  self-contained  art  which  had  reached  a  high 
stage  of  development  more  than  3,000  years  ago. 
In  the  foregoing  pages  we  have  noted  the  distribution  in  northern 
Eurasia  and  eastern  Asia  of  the  line  and  spur  motives  that  formed 
so  important  a  part  of  what  seems  to  have  been  the  oldest  phase  of 
Old  Bering  Sea  art.  There  remains  to  be  considered  the  more  typical, 
curvilinear  art  of  Old  Bering  Sea  styles  2  and  3.  Are  these  graceful 
and  elaborate  compositions  that  at  first  glance  appear  so  exotic,  so 
strangely  out  of  place  in  the  Arctic,  to  be  regarded  as  of  strictly 
local  origin,  or  is  there,  perhaps,  as  Jenness  has  suggested  (1933, 
p.  387),  some  remote  relationship  with  the  highly  developed  art  styles 
of  eastern  Asia?  It  seems  more  than  likely  that  the  later  forms  of 
Old  Bering  Sea  composition  are  of  local  origin ;  at  least  nothing  closely 
approaching  them  is  known  from  eastern  Asia.  The  particular  com- 
bination of  elements  employed — straight  and  curving  lines,  dotted 
lines,  spurs,  small  circles  set  between  converging  lines,  and  larger 
circles  or  ovals — is  to  be  found  in  no  other  art  style,  and  the  pat- 
