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ARCHAEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS IN BERING STRAIT, 1926 
By D. Jenness 
Plate 
Illustrations 
XI. A. View of Wales, Alaska, looking west towards Siberia, which is visible 
from the hillside on clear days. The mound on which old house- 
sites were excavated is seen rising from the tundra immediately 
behind the village 
B. Chukchees leaving Little Diomede island on the return voyage from 
Alaska to Siberia * 
Page 
72 
72 
XII. Sealing harpoon heads typical of the successive culture strata in 
northern Alaska 76 
XIII. Ivory specimens illustrating the archaic Bering Sea culture and its 
curvilinear art, from Diomede islands 78 
The writer spent the summer in northern Alaska in pursuance of the 
following instructions: 
'‘(a) to investigate the archaeological remains in the vicinity of Bering strait; and 
( b ) to investigate the Eskimo dialects spoken in the same region. 
In excavating the ancient ruins around Bering strait you will keep in mind two 
problems: 
(1) The origin of Eskimo culture, whether it arose in Alaska or elsewhere; and 
(2) the possibility that tribes have migrated since Pleistocene time from Asia to America 
across Bering strait, or from America to Asia. Ruins that may possibly throw light on 
these problems are to be found at cape Prince of Wales, on Diomede islands, and on the 
Siberian shore, at East cape and Utan. Nevertheless, should you discover other ruins in 
the vicinity that seem likely to yield valuable evidence, you are at liberty to excavate 
them, subject always to the permission of the proper authorities. 
In your linguistic work, which you should be able to carry out concurrently with 
the archaeological, you should aim to augment the report which you have in hand entitled, 
"A Comparative Grammar and Vocabulary of the Western Eskimo Dialects,” by gathering 
vocabularies and grammatical forms from any new dialects you may encounter.” 
The writer left Ottawa on May 24, and travelling from Seattle by the 
first passenger steamer of the season, reached Nome on June 12. At 
Nome he arranged with the Enterprise Steamship Company to travel on 
its mail schooner, the Silver Wave, to Wales, on the east side of Bering 
strait; the schooner would then call for him a fortnight later and convey 
him back to Nome, that he might charter a smaller boat belonging to the 
same company in which to visit Diomede islands and other places of 
archaeological interest. The mail schooner, after being detained by ice 
at Teller for four days, landed him at Wales on June 20. It returned 
from the north on July 6, but, being unable to communicate with the shore 
on account of a high sea, continued its voyage to Nome without stopping. 
He thus found himself marooned in Wales until July 25, when the United 
States Revenue steamer “Bear” anchored off the coast, bringing formal 
permission from the Russian Government for excavations at East cape 
and Utan, on the Siberian coast, provided that he first reported to the 
Russian authorities at Petropavlovsk, nearly 1,000 miles to the southward, 
and subsequently transferred to them all the specimens he recovered. 
As these conditions made his intended visit to Siberia impracticable, the 
project was abandoned in favour of an immediate investigation of the 
ruins on Diomede islands. Captain Cochran, the commander of the 
“ Bear courteously conveyed him across the strait, and promised to call 
