208 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 192 



areas described by Drucker (1943). The latter are not altogether 

 satisfactory for our purposes, because Drucker's typology often does 

 not correspond closely enough to our specimens to permit detailed 

 comparisons, and because the artifacts upon which it is based have, 

 for the most part, found their way into museums without adequate 

 data that could tell us their relative ages. It is probably safe to 

 assume that most of the known specimens from the northern and 

 central Northwest Coast are not very old and, like the Tlingit material 

 excavated near Angoon in 1950, represent the aboriginal cultures in 

 the late prehistoric and protohistoric periods. 



It is especially unfortunate that no Nootkan material is included 

 in Drucker's summary of Northwest Coast archeology, since both 

 Borden (1951, 1962) and Drucker (1955) have emphasized the pecuhar 

 position of the Nootka on the Northwest Coast, and have cited 

 similarities between Nootka and Eskimo cultures. The Nootka have 

 been described as the most Eskimo-Hke and also as the Indian group 

 longest estabhshed on the Northwest Coast. For this reason, an 

 understanding of their archeology is crucial. 



On the southern Northwest Coast, on the other hand, we have 

 abundant material from sites within the Coast Sahsh area, some of 

 established antiquity, others more recent. Here we are faced with 

 the products of a long, complex history, involving cultural exchanges 

 between the coast and the interior and between the north and the 

 south. In addition, there are local innovations which seem to be 

 pecuhar to specific communities. For example, there seem to be 

 important differences between the largely contemporary Marpole and 

 Locarno Beach Phases of the first millennium B. C. (Borden, 1962). 

 Since some of the most impotant material has not yet been pubhshed 

 in full, we have again been forced to compare the Yakutat artifacts 

 with southern Northwest Coast types, rather than with actual speci- 

 mens. It also seems evident from what has been published that the 

 history of the cultural growths and spreads in this area has not yet 

 been worked out, nor the chronology of the various sites yet firmly 

 established. Part of the trouble has lain in defining the problem too 

 simply in terms of interior and Eskimo types or influences, neglecting 

 the full implications of cultural change which also was going on in the 

 interior, as well as the fact that striking changes have occurred in 

 Eskimo cultures during the 2,300 to 3,000 years represented by the 

 southern Northwest Coast sites, so that influences coming from the 

 interior or from the north would have been different at different 

 periods. Another difficulty hes in the fact that many "interior" 

 traits are quite at home in Eskimo culture, so that the dichotomy 

 imphed by the labels "interior" and "Eskimoid" is misleading. It 

 should also be remembered that the Pacific Eskimo are just as truly 



