de Lagiina] ARCHEOLOGY, YAKUT AT BAY AREA, ALASKA 163 



shamans (Drucker, 1950, Traits 627, 632). This suggests that the 

 nose pin was the older style of ornament, retained by shamans, after 

 the silver nosering had become popular in historic times for secular 

 wear. The chief, a young woman, and a man, sketched at Yakutat 

 by Suria in 1791 (pis. v, vi, viii in Wagner, 1936), all seem to be 

 wearing some kind of nose pin. It is not clear from Barnett's list 

 (1939, Trait 1136) whether the Gulf of Georgia Salish wore a bone pin 

 in the nose or only used it to make a hole in the septmn. Nose 

 ornaments are well known from the interior Athabaskans. 



It would appear that nose ornaments were characteristic of the 

 Northwest Coast. They seem to be relatively late in southwestern 

 Alaska, perhaps not antedating Kachemak Bay ITT, and are a trait 

 linking the Aleut and Pacific Eskimo with their neighbors, in the 

 interior, at Yakutat, and farther south, rather than with the northern 

 Eskimo. 



LABRETS 



Since the Yakutat women wore large medial labrets in the late ISth 

 century (see sketches by Suria with Malaspina, in Wagner, 1936, pis. 

 II, VI, and in, Olson, 1956, p. 677), and a few were stiU wearing small 

 silver studs a hundred years later, it is surprising that we found no 

 labrets. To be sure, Yakutat labrets are said to have been made of 

 wood, and so would not have been preserved, but the same descrip- 

 tions are given of Tlingit labrets in general, although specimens of 

 stone were found in the Angoon area (de Laguna, 1960, pp. 121 f.). 

 It is more likely that the prehistoric Yakutat, like the Copper River 

 Eyak, did not wear this type of ornament (Birket-Smith and de 

 Laguna, 1938, p. 62), and the apparent absence of the labret from 

 this area requires explanation in view of its otherwise wide distribution. 



In southwestern Alaska and in the southern Bristol Bay area, both 

 the larger medial labrets and the smaller lateral labrets occur arche- 

 ologically in sites of all known periods and are reported ethnologically. 

 They were worn by both sexes, and within this area the most elaborate 

 forms were evolved (de Laguna, 1934, pp. 205 fl.; 1956, pp. 205, 207; 

 Heizer, 1956, pi. 79; Larsen, 1950, pp. 181, 183). The medial labret 

 worn by women is reported ethnographically from the Tlingit, Haida, 

 Tsimshian, and northern Kwakiutl, but not farther south (Drucker, 

 1950, Traits 636-638; Niblack, 1890, p. 260), although archeological 

 labrets are known from the Thngit, Haida, Bella Coola, and Coast 

 Salish areas (Drucker, 1943, p. 122; de Laguna, 1934, pp. 204 fF.). 

 A medial labret was found in Locarno Beach I, where an antler figurine 

 shows that it was worn by men (Borden, 1951, pi. I, 12). Other 

 labrets from the Eraser Delta area include small lateral forms (Duff, 

 1956). Borden (1962) ascribes labrets to both the Marpole and 



