330  SMITHSONIAN    MISCELLANEOUS    COLLECTIONS  VOL.    96 
tion  of  the  northeastern  Siberian  tribes  from  the  rest  of  Asia  and 
their  closer  relationship  to  America  is  thought  to  point  to  such  a  con- 
clusion. Furthermore,  from  a  technological  standpoint,  Laufer  con- 
siders that  the  Eskimo-Chukchee  plate  armor  may  have  been  but  the 
culminating  stage  in  a  developmental  sequence  that  in  America  began 
with  simple  skin  armor,  and  from  that  passed  to  a  secondary  stage 
in  w^hich  v^^ood  was  covered  with  elk  hide  or  in  which  strengthening 
elements  were  attached  to  the  outside  or  inside  of  the  skin  cuirass. 
Such  a  development  would  be  analogous  to  but  independent  of  the 
similar  development  in  China  where  the  original  skin  armor  was  svic- 
ceeded  by  types  in  which  the  skin  was  reinforced  with  scales  of  copper 
and  iron,  and  these  in  turn  by  rectangular  plates  of  iron  (Laufer, 
1914,  p.  269).  While  admitting  that  the  problem  of  the  American- 
Siberian  plate  armor  is  not  susceptible  of  a  definite  solution,  Laufer 
concludes  (1914,  pp.  269-270)  : 
No  fundamental  difference  can  be  found  in  the  employment  of  wood  and  bone, 
or  ivory,  which  simply  present  purely  technical  changes  of  material ;  and 
American- Asiatic  bone  plate  armor,  after  all,  might  be  conceived  as  quite  a 
natural  development,  which  may  have  arisen  independently,  without  the  contact 
of  an  outside  culture.  Its  coming  into  existence  could  be  explained  by  the  trend 
of  indigenous  thought  and  the  inventiveness  of  the  aborigines,  which  may  have 
resulted  in  a  large  variety  of  ingenious  armor  spread  over  an  extensive  area. 
There  remain  other  considerations  to  be  made  which  would  seem  to  confirm 
this  impression.  The  cut,  the  style,  and  the  mode  of  wearing  armor  in  the  North- 
Pacific  region  are  different  from  those  in  eastern  Asia.  The  peculiar  Chukchi 
fashion  of  having  the  left  side  covered  up  and  the  left  arm  and  hand  hidden  in 
the  armor,  while  only  the  right  arm  remains  free  for  action,  is  a  striking 
feature,  which  is  entirely  lacking  in  any  other  part  of  Asia.  At  any  rate,  I  am 
inclined  toward  the  opinion  that  the  type  of  bone  plate  armor  under  consideration 
is  not  exclusively  due  to  an  impact  of  foreign  influence.  In  some  form  unknown 
to  us  it  may  have  pre-existed,  before  any  metal  plate  armor  had  reached  the 
Far  East ;  while  I  am  quite  willing  to  admit  that  at  some  later  period  the 
regular,  rectangular  shapes  of  the  ivory  plates,  and  the  peculiar  method  of 
lashing  them  together,  may  be  the  outcome  of  an  adaptation  of  some  imported 
model. 
We  may  now  consider  what  bearing  the  archeological  finds  may  have 
on  the  problem.  We  observe  first  of  all  that  plate  armor  does  not 
appear  on  St.  Lawrence  Lsland  until  the  Punuk  stage.  It  is  unques- 
tionably an  importation  from  the  Asiatic  mainland,  where  identical 
forms  are  not  only  found  at  present  but  where,  as  Laufer's  researches 
have  shown,  the  type  has  existed  from  early  times.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  modern  Alaskan  Eskimos  between  Bering  Strait  and  the  Aleutian 
Islands  seem  to  have  been  unacquainted  with  armor  of  any  kind  and 
the  excavations  of  Jochelson,  Hrdlicka.  and  de  Laguna  have  revealed 
