172 ANTHROPOLOGICAL, SURVEY IN ALASKA [ETH. ANN. 46 



with the officers and men of the Bear, particularly Boatswain H. 

 Berg; to the Lomen brothers and their esteemed father, at Nome; 

 to Father B. La Fortune and the Keverend Baldwin at Nome; to 

 Mr. Sylvester Chance, superintendent of the northwestern district, 

 Bureau of Education ; to Mr. Charles D. Brower, trader at Barrow ; 

 to Mr. Jim Allen, trader at Wainwright ; and to Dr. E. P. Walker, 

 head of the Biological Survey of Alaska. The list to follow, supple- 

 mented by maps, will give in brief the name, location, and description 

 of the remains. 



The old sites occur, (1) in the form of refuse heaps; (2) as late 

 village sites, smaller or larger areas of ground covered with mostly 

 circular elevations and depressions, with occasionally the wooden re- 

 mains of igloos or kashims, or only partly ruined dwellings; such 

 remains are the most common; (3) as old village sites in the form of 

 a long irregular ridge mound or of more or less separate heaps; 

 (4) as heaps or " mounds " of individual structures. And as 

 " passed " sites, covered completely by sand or silt and unknown until 

 uncovered through the washing away by the sea or rivers of some of 

 the deposits. 



In addition there are the remains of burial grounds which are 

 occasionally marked by small low mounds or hummocks produced by 

 decayed burials that have been more or less assimilated by the tundra. 

 Stony beaches with chips, implements, etc., such as are found off old 

 sites on the Yukon, have not been seen in the region now dealt with 

 in any instance. 



The ruined dwellings and communal houses throughout this region, 

 with a few minor exceptions, were of one general type. They were 

 circular, yurta-shaped, semisubterranean structures, with a more or 

 less subterranean tunnel approach, built of hewn driftwood and 

 earth. These dwellings, when the wood decays and the dome falls 

 in, leave characteristic saucer-and-handle-like depressions. But 

 where such dwellings were close, and especially where they were 

 heaped up or superimposed on older ones, the remains, together with 

 the refuse, may form an irregular elevated ridge or a large irregular 

 mound. 



On the Diomede Islands the dwellings are built of stone, and ruins 

 of stone houses have been reported to me from inland of the western- 

 most parts of the Seward Peninsula. Stone dwellings were also 

 known on Norton Sound. 



Some of the ridges and heaps, as at Shishmaref, Point Hope, one 

 of the Punuk Islands, etc., are large and may be up to 15 feet and over 

 in depth, but mostly the remains are of moderate to small size. The 

 latter sometimes could easily be confounded with natural formations. 

 The older remains may superficially be indistinguishable even to an 



