364  SMITHSONIAN    MISCELLANEOUS    COLLECTIONS  VOL.    96 
the  Thule  culture  and  Western  Eskimo  culture  as  a  whole.  On  the 
Other  hand,  when  we  take  into  account  the  specific  aspects  of  those 
features  which  exhibit  variability,  we  see  that  in  almost  every  instance 
the  immediate  resemblances  are  between  the  Thule  culture  and  the 
Punuk  or  modern  phases  of  St.  Lawrence  culture.  The  fact  that 
most  of  the  Thule  features  at  Gambell  appear  suddenly,  with  no 
indication  of  connection  with  earlier  local  forms,  points  to  their  hav- 
ing been  introduced.  For  this  reason  the  St.  Lawrence  finds  them- 
selves throw  no  direct  light  on  the  problem  of  the  origin  of  the  Thule 
culture.  In  seeking  the  solution  of  this  problem,  we  must  turn  to 
the  Arctic  coast,  as  Mathiassen  has  pointed  out. 
Mathiassen  (1927,  vol.  2,  pp.  174,  175,  176)  has  shown  how  in  a 
great  many  respects  the  Thule  culture  is  very  close  to  that  of  the 
modern  Point  Barrow  Eskimos : 
....  we  find  that  of  the  152  unquestionable  Thule  elements  we  recognise  no 
fewer  than  94  in  the  Pt.  Barrow  district,  and,  what  is  more,  they  are  for  the 
most  part  types  which  belong  to  the  most  characteristic  in  the  Thule  culture, 
as  for  instance  22  of  the  31  "  representative  forms  "  of  the  Thule  culture 
All  in  all,  one  must  say  that  the  likeness  between  the  Thule  culture  and  the 
Pt.  Barrow  culture  is  exceedingly  great;  and  in  respect  to  these  it  is  not 
nearly  so  necessary,  as  in  West  Greenland,  to  turn  to  old  finds  for  the  purpose 
of  finding  parallels  to  the  Thule  culture.  The  greater  part  of  the  elements 
mentioned  above  are  in  use  among  the  Pt.  Barrow  Eskimos  to  this  day,  or  at 
any  rate  they  were  when  Murdoch  visited  them  in  the  i88o's,  and  for  the  most 
part  these  are  elements  which  play  a  predominating  part  in  their  culture  .... 
There  is  hardly  any  doubt  that  the  Pt.  Barrow  Eskimos  are  the  Eskimo  tribe 
living  to-day  that  most  closely  approaches  the  Thule  culture. 
In  two  subsequent  publications  (1929,  1930  a)  Mathiassen  has 
turned  to  the  archeological  material  from  this  area  and  has  sought 
to  identify  the  Thule  culture  with  the  early  stage  of  culture  repre- 
sented in  the  Van  Valin  finds.  While  the  modern  Point  Barrow  cul- 
ture contains  a  great  many  Thule  elements  (94),  the  Van  Valin 
material  is  thought  to  represent  a  still  closer  approach  to  the  Thule 
culture  because  it  contains  scarcely  any  of  the  local  forms  which 
are  so  prominent  in  the  modern  culture  and  which  must  be  presumed 
to  have  developed  since  the  Thule  culture  spread  to  the  eastward. 
This,  however,  is  hardly  sufficient.  While  we  may  safely  disregard 
these  special  later  Alaskan  features,  which  have  no  bearing  on  the 
Thule  problem,  the  important  question  to  be  answered  is  whether  the 
archeological  material  excavated  by  Van  Valin  contains  either  a  greater 
number  of  Thule  elements  than  does  the  modern  culture,  or  elements 
which,  in  their  particular  forms,  show  a  closer  resemblance  to  the 
Thule  elements  than  do  those  of  the  modern  culture.    In  other  words, 
