122 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 60 



worthy fact that, although great skill was shown in the shaping 

 of stone by these processes, spear and harpoon heads, knives, and 

 especially the woman's knife, were very often shaped and sharpened 

 by grinding. Familiarity with this process in the shaping of bone 

 and ivory would necessarily suggest its use in working stone. The 

 grooved ax, celt, and gouge are absent from the area. 



Stone was used also in the manufacture of various personal orna- 

 ments, as labrets, beads, ear plugs, and pendants, some of these being 

 unsurpassed for beauty of material and finish. Figurines, toys, 

 fetishes, charms, talismans, and a multitude of other articles were 

 also carved with great skill and in all available materials, and en- 

 graving of pictorial subjects of considerable merit is a distinctive 

 feature of the more recent arctic art. 



It is a remarkable fact that pottery was formerly in common use 

 in the far north, especially along the coast as far east as Franklin 

 Bay. The vessels, rather thick-walled, and generally of medium or 

 large size, were probably intended for cooking and containing food, 

 but are of good shape and tastefully ornamented with incised and 

 impressed decorations. The pottery-making period is not yet deter- 

 mined, but the art appears not to have been practiced in recent times, 

 except in the manufacture of lamps. 



As Avith many of the ethnic areas of America, the material culture 

 of the present and past blend completely. The task of determining 

 by a study of the antiquities the changes that have been wrought 

 falls to archeology. The shell heaps of the Aleutian Islands have 

 yielded data of interest regarding the problems of chronology, carry- 

 ing the story back perhaps thousands of years. The Bering region 

 is believed to be pregnant with historic interest — geological, geo- 

 graphical, climatic, and anthropological — to hold within its soil and 

 more recent formations solutions of many of the problems of the 

 American race — but the inquirer must wait. 



A comparison of the culture of the Eskimo race with that of the 

 other ethnic groups of the continent must result in 

 Culture status giving tliis people an enviable place in the scale of 

 intellectual achievement, but the environment has 

 placed rigid limitations on the possibilities of accomplishment. 

 However, the list of minor artifacts would probably be as long as 

 that of any other northern American area, and many of the things 

 are without corresponding features elsewhere. 



Among the explorers who have contributed original information 

 regarding Eskimo culture may be mentioned Dall, Murdoch, Nel- 

 son, Turner, Boas, Solberg. Rink, INIackenzie, Holm, Frobisher, 

 Simpson, Krantz, Kane, Hoffman, ({renfell, and Stefansson. 



