266 THE ESKIMO ABOUT BERING STRAIT (ETH. ANN. 18 
were seen about the Chukchi camp, but there were many vertebrie and 
other bones gathered from tke ruins of the Eskimo houses. A man 
was seen digging up a whale’s jawbone from one of the old house sites, 
and there were evidences that many others had been removed in the 
same manner by the present inhabitants. 
During repeated visits made to these ruins I was impressed by 
several circumstances which may serve to shed light on their age, as 
shown by the following observations: 
Villages 1 and 2 are on a high knoll which rises like an island from 
the low, flat shore, the sides sloping down to the narrow, pebble-coy- 
ered neck of land (at 7) which separates a lagoon on one side from the 
open sea on the other. Number 4 is on higher ground than the neck at 
number 7, and is made up of sand and gravel. Number 5 is the present 
seashore or water line. Number 6 is a well-marked ancient water line, 
close to the edge of which was built the village marked 3. There is 
a gravelly beach between the present and former water lines. Number 
7 is a pebble-covered beach, probably two feet above extreme high water 
line at present. 
It will be noticed that number 2 fronts directly upon 7 and is located 
exactly as an Eskimo village would be placed if 7 were an open chan- 
nel. The western Eskimo have an almost invariable custom of build- 
ing their villages facing the water and parallel with the shore line. I 
think it may safely be stated that none of these people ever placed a 
village site in the relation to the sea that the site of number 2 now bears, 
and it consequently follows, almost as a demonstrated fact, that village 
number 2 was built and occupied when 7 was an open waterway, sepa- 
rating the high knoll of Cape Wankarem from the mainland and thus 
forming it into an island. 
I think number 2 marks the most ancient of the villages, for number 
3 is so placed in regard to the ancient beach (6) that it could not have 
been safely inhabited until the sea came to occupy nearly its present 
water line. I should conclude that the land had been raised about 
three feet from its ancient level at the time the water line stood at 6, 
when village number 3 was occupied. The gradual upraising of the 
coast must have made village number 2 untenable and caused the 
people to change to number 3, that and number 1 probably being the 
last villages occupied by the Eskimo, who had disappeared from this 
part of the coast before the historical period. 
The severity of the Arctic climate on this bleak coast renders it very 
difficult, if not impossible, to make an estimate of any value (basing cal- 
culations upon the decay of perishable articles) as to the length of time 
that has elapsed since an ancient site was occupied. If data were at 
hand to estimate the rate of the rise of the land on the northwestern 
Alaska and Siberian coasts, we would have a key to the approximate 
age of villages 2 and 3 at Cape Wankarem, and probably to the age of 
numerous other settlements along the same shore. 
