de Lnguna] ARCHEOLOGY, YAKUTAT BAY AREA, ALASKA. 209 



Eskimo as their Arctic relatives, even though they do not correspond 

 to the ''Esldmo" stereotype, and it is in the Pacific Eskimo cultures 

 of southwestern Alaska that many of the "interior" traits have a 

 great antiquity and fundamental importance. 



Recently, however, instead of interpreting similarities between the 

 ancient southern Northwest Coast and Eskimo cultures as due to 

 influences from the latter, Borden (1962) suggests that diffusion from 

 south to north carried to the Eskimo such important traits as labrets, 

 the grinding of slate, stone saws, etc. Some of these, as well as 

 other traits, are assumed to have come from the Siberian Neolithic 

 and to have traveled to southern British Columbia via inland Alaskan 

 and Canadian routes, without Eskimo intermediaries, perhaps before 

 the Eskimo had moved from a homeland in southwestern Alaska to 

 stand at the bridge of Bering Strait. This hypothesis has been 

 suggested primarily because the available radiocarbon dates would 

 place Eskimo cultures wdth these traits as later than the Eraser River 

 Delta sites that share them. Unfortunately, many of these dates, 

 Hke the two from Kachemak Bay, for example, stand alone without 

 corroboration, or betray serious inconsistencies, as with the Okvik- 

 Old Bering Sea readings (Rainy and Ralph, 1959, pp. 373 f.; Giddings, 

 1960, pp. 123 f.). Until adequate series of mutually supporting 

 radiocarbon dates are available for the cultures in question, it would 

 seem wiser to note similarities in trait inventories as indications of 

 cultural relationships, without deciding too definitely the direction or 

 route of diffusion. 



If we have leaned heavily on Pacific Eskimo archeology in making 

 our comparisons, it is both because this archeology is known in con- 

 siderable detail and because there are undoubtedly close similarities 

 between Yakutat and Pacific Eskimo culture, particularly that of the 

 Chugach. There is hardly a single trait of Yakutat archeology that 

 cannot be duplicated or at least matched by something similar from 

 Prince WilHam Sound, and the trends noted with respect to the use 

 of copper, of woodworking tools, and so forth, are the same in both 

 areas. Many of these points of similarity apply to traits that are 

 narrowly diffused and that appear only in late prehistoric times, but 

 others apply to traits that are very much older. 



We seem, therefore, to be dealing with a North Pacific province 

 where the cultural lines between Aleut-Pacific Eskimo and Eyak- 

 Yakutat are much less sharply drawn than are the Imguistic bound- 

 aries. TMiere the southern limits of this province are to be found will 

 depend upon future archeological work on the Northwest Coast, but 

 we should not be surprised if the northern Tlmgit, or perhaps all of 

 the northern Northwest Coast, might not have to be included within 

 a major North Pacific region. In defming such a cultural province, 



