76 
the upper layers, had ceased to appear, but the presence of an occasional 
harpoon-head with closed socket indicated that even the 3-foot level was 
formed probably not more than 300 years ago; certainly it was less ancient 
than the mound dwellings of Wales. The heap appeared to extend much 
deeper, how much it was impossible to determine; but now that the upper 
soil has been removed, the villagers will doubtless overturn the lower 
levels for the sake of the ivory. 
Attempts to excavate two other ruins failed owing to the enormous 
rocks under which they were buried. Portions of their entrances that 
were uncovered yielded a number of specimens, but the floors of the houses 
themselves were inaccessible. Two stone houses and a rubbish heap 
were excavated on Big Diomede island, 4 miles away; they appeared to 
date from the same period as the houses excavated on Little Diomede. 
On both islands many of the specimens in the houses, even when they 
lay 2 or 3 feet underground, had decayed so completely through exposure 
to the air and water permeating the rocks that they fell to pieces on removal; 
large implements of ivory and bone that appeared firm to the eye crumbled 
almost to nothing in the hand. But in the rubbish-heaps similar objects 
were preserved perfectly, because the heaps had no large crevices to admit 
air and w r ater, and the overlying soil remained frozen throughout the year. 
The results obtained from the excavations in Diomede islands con- 
firmed those of Wales, the history of the two places during the last few 
centuries having followed, apparently, much the same course. Iron, 
beads, fish-nets, and pipes reached both places about the same time, 
roughly 250 years ago, when the aboriginal sealing harpoon-head was 
just evolving into its present form. Caribou bones were rare or absent 
in the islands, and more implements were made of walrus ivory, reflecting 
a slight difference in the economic environment; but in the main the 
specimens excavated in the two places were indistinguishable. 
The sealing harpoon -heads present a very interesting problem. Through- 
out the Arctic the Eskimos use a harpoon-head with a closed socket that 
is formed by drilling up the base of the implement. This type, the only 
form used in modern times, was preceded at Wales and at Diomede islands 
by a type with an open socket into which the foreshaft of the harpoon 
was lashed through a series of holes (either two or three) drilled on each 
side of the socket. Earlier still, a rectangular slot on each side fulfilled 
the same function as the drilled holes; or else the edges of the implement 
were trimmed away for the lashing. Only the two last forms (considered 
here as one type) were present in the mound dwellings at Wales, whereas 
the three ruins in that place that dated about 1700 contained specimens 
of all three types. The rubbish heap on Little Diomede island, even though 
it had been disturbed by the natives, showed the succession fairly clearly. 
In the upper layers there were only closed-socketed harpoon-heads of 
different varieties; lower down, nearly all had open sockets with drilled 
holes for the lashings; and at the 3-foot level the open-socketed type with 
rectangular slots or no holes at all for the lashing began to predominate. 
Evidently the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth centuries 
were transitional periods in Bering strait, during which all three types 
were in current use. 
Slightly modified varieties of these three forms of harpoon- 
heads are common in Arctic Canada, the open-socketed forms being 
associated with Thule culture remains. Whether the form with 
