NO.    I  ARCHEOLOGY    OF    ST.    LAWRENCE    ISLAND COLLINS  34I 
it  had  been  altered  in  form — made  longer  and  provided  with  lighter 
runners — would  it  have  been  thoroughly  adapted  to  land  travel ;  and 
one  might  reasonably  suppose  that  this  change  was  made  at  the  time 
when  dogs  w^ere  first  utilized  as  draught  animals.  Mathiassen  (1930  a, 
p.  88)  visualizes  some  such  transformation  taking  place  as  the  Eskimos 
of  the  Thule  culture  left  their  settled  homes  in  the  west  and  migrated 
eastward. 
....  when  the  Thule  Culture  Eskimos  during  their  movement  eastwards  came 
to  regions  where  the  big  aquatic  mammals  were  less  abundant,  drift-wood  more 
scarce  and  with  less  open  water,  it  was  ....  then  that  the  dog  sledge  attained 
the  dominating  position  in  the  culture  that  it  still  has  in  these  regions,  whereas 
on  the  other  hand  the  importance  of  the  umiak  diminished  until  it  entirely 
disappeared;  it  now  became  necessary  to  make  long  winter  journeys,  and  for 
this  purpose  the  dog  sledge  was  indispensable. 
Mathiassen  does  not  suppose  that  it  was  during  this  eastward  migra- 
tion that  dogs  were  first  employed  by  the  Eskimos  in  hauling  sledges ; 
in  his  opinion  they  had  known  dog  traction  earlier  but  in  their  settled 
life  along  the  coasts  it  had  been  of  little  importance.  On  the  other 
hand,  as  we  have  seen,  the  archeological  evidence  seems  to  indicate 
that  in  early  times  dog  traction  was  entirely  unknown  at  least  on  St. 
Lawrence  Island  and  at  Point  Barrow.  It  must  be  admitted  that  it 
is  difficult  to  think  of  this  being  a  universal  condition  in  the  west, 
for  in  view  of  the  known  antiquity  of  dog  traction  and  sledges  in  the 
Old  World  (Birket-Smith,  1929,  vol.  2,  p.  169;  Hatt,  1934,  pp.  2758, 
-759)'  it  would  mean  that  the  complex  had  been  invented  inde- 
pendently by  the  Thule  Eskimos,  presumably  after  they  had  pene- 
trated east  of  Barrow.  Mathiassen's  view  that  the  ancestors  of  the 
Thule  Eskimos  possessed  a  latent  knowledge  of  dog  traction  would 
certainly  provide  a  better  explanation.  It  may  be  that  definite  evidence 
of  the  early  use  of  dog  traction  may  yet  appear  around  Bering  Strait, 
possibly  on  the  Siberian  side.  This  would  not  be  so  very  surprising,  as 
there  are  several  features — lamps,  the  Thule  type  3  harpoon  head, 
and  lashing  holes  around  the  sockets  of  harjioon  heads — which  link  the 
Thule  cultm-e  with  Bering  Strait  more  closely  than  with  Barrow  or 
St.  Lawrence  Island. 
Lamps  and  Cooking  Pots 
The  Gambell  excavations  have  shown  conclusively  that  the  par- 
ticular forms  of  pottery  lamps,  lamp  rests,  and  cooking  pots  described 
from  St.  Lawrence  Island  by  Hough  and  Nelson  have  been  in  use 
there  for  only  a  relatively  short  time.  From  the  old  section  of  Gambell, 
2Z 
