76 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 192 



cache like the Storage House (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, 

 pp. 346 f.). 



Analysis of ethnological data, which we have attempted in default 

 of comparable archeological information, can, of course, only suggest 

 the relative antiquity of features of house construction. The houses 

 of the Northwest Coast, of the Pacific Eskimo, and of the peoples of 

 the adjacent hinterland, as they are known to us ethnographically, 

 seem to combine to varying degrees particular features of construc- 

 tion which we suspect to be of different ages and that presumably 

 diffused at different rates. Obviously the only sm-e method of dis- 

 entangling the complex history of house building on the Northwest 

 Coast is through extensive and painstaking excavations, as yet not 

 undertaken in the most critical areas. 



