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ANTHROPOLOGICAL, SURVEY IN ALASKA 



[ETH. ANN. 46 



any higher culture, and since he is gone the ever-cutting river has 

 taken away whatever it could reach and scattered it through its 

 silts and gravels. There is nevertheless a number of small elevated 

 plateaus along the right bank that ought to be sounded by explora- 

 tory pits or trenches, particularly perhaps where there are traces of 

 later habitations. 



There are. of course, some sites that are older than others. The 

 most interesting of these was found at Bonasila, beneath the old 

 site of Makki or Magimute, IS miles downstream from Anvik. (See 

 Narrative.) The main facts concerning this site are as follows: 



At the above distance from Anvik, on the right bank of the river 

 and following a wooded hill, is a low flat backed by rising ground 



Figcrb 10. — The Yukon from near Marshall lo below Kavlingnak 



and cut across by a little stream. The flat is narrow, at present about 

 300 feet; and the part above the stream is deeply pitted by the re- 

 mains of semisubterranean houses of a " dead " native village, which 

 I believe is identifiable with the Magimute of the Russians. On the 

 slope behind the village were still about a score of old surface burials, 

 with an article here and there of Russian derivation. 



The bank of the flat rises at present only about 4 feet above the 

 beach of the river, but the flat behind is higher. The bank itself 

 contains many specimens showing human workmanship, consisting 

 of objects of stone, birch bark, bone, and rarely also of ivory, besides 

 many fragments of pottery, many bones of wild Alaskan animals, 

 and here and there a human skeleton. Some of these objects are low 

 down in the bank. All the bones from the bank, including the 

 human, and even the rare points of ivory ? are semifossilized ; the 



