384 



by the collections hitherto made of stone objects from this 

 part of Greenland. As a rule, it is the largest and best- 

 preserved houses which have been excavated, while the older 

 and much dilapidated houses have not received so much atten- 

 tion. Moreover, the rubbish heaps in front of the houses, par- 

 ticularly the oldest ones, have only here and there been thor- 

 oughly ransacked. I am inclined to believe that it is as yet 

 premature to speak — as 0. Solberg^) does — of the rapid 

 decay and disappearance of the stone-age culture in North 

 East Greenland, and from the temporary scantiness of stone 

 implements discovered there, to draw conclusions as to the 

 short life of the Eskimo culture now extinct in those parts. 



I particularly disagree with Solberg's general statement that 

 the one-edged stone knives found in North East Greenland only 

 to a very slight extent resemble Eskimo implements, and can 

 only be explained as the result of European influence. It may 

 possibly hold good of some few knives with iron blades and 

 wooden hafts, which may have had their origin in Clavering's 

 Expedition to the coast in 1823 (see under inv. Amd. 79)^ or 

 have been washed on to the ice from whalers, or have been 

 brought there by immigrants from the south in times past. 

 But Murdoch mentions, as typical of the western Eskimo cul- 

 ture in Alaska, not only stone- knives, both two-edged and one- 

 edged, but also crooked knives with wooden hafts ^). There 

 is thus nothing remarkable in our finding similar types of im- 

 plements in North East Greenland (cf. also under inv. Amd. 69]. 



The stone artefacts brought home by Amdrup have there- 

 fore a claim on our interest (except perhaps one specimen, the 

 artificiality of which is doubtful). Three of the objects are 

 from Skærgaardshalvo, which for the present I choose to regard 

 as the southern boundary of the North East Greenland culture; 



>) Solberg 59—60. 



2) Murdoch I, 151 — 161. 



