77 
drilled holes for the lashings is later there than the other open-socketed 
form, as in Bering strait, has not yet been determined. The change to 
the modern closed-socketed type, however, seems to have occurred earlier 
in Canada than in Bering strait. It was apparently the only type used 
in Hudson bay in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and one speci- 
men, with several open-socketed forms, was recovered from an old 
stone house on Victoria island, which was surely two or more centuries 
older. At Barter island, again, on the Arctic coast of Alaska near the 
International Boundary, where the writer excavated nearly fifty ruined 
houses in 1914, every harpoon-head had a closed socket, although these 
houses antedated all contact with Europeans. From the evidence at present 
available, therefore, it would appear that this type of sealing harpoon-head 
first established itself in the central or eastern Arctic, but was rare in Bering 
strait until comparatively modern times. It may, indeed, have been known 
there even in ancient times, for the whaling harpoon-head seems always 
to have possessed a closed socket, and a few sealing harpoon-heads of the 
same type have every appearance of antiquity; but, broadly speaking, 
a closed-socketed sealing harpoon-head from any site around Bering 
strait indicates an antiquity no greater than 300 years, and an open- 
socketed type not less than 200. 
During the stay on Little Diomede island, the writer saw a very 
curious harpoon-head unearthed in front of a native’s hut, where a cache 
for meat was under construction. This harpoon-head had three terminal 
barbs arranged symmetrically, one on each side of the base and one in the 
middle, an open socket with rectangular slots for the lashings, and two 
deep slots in the forward part to hold small blades of stone. Similar 
specimens are known from other places; for example, there is one in the 
Philadelphia Museum, from Wales, another from the Kuskokwim region, 
and a third, slightly modified at the front, from the vicinity of Barrow. 
Now these harpoon-heads, although the most complex, appear to be the 
oldest yet discovered; they were not found in the mound dwellings at 
Wales, although they evidently occur in that village; and the specimen 
unearthed on Little Diomede island was 8 feet below the surface. The 
type has not been found outside of Alaska, except on the Siberian shore. 
Around Barrow the terminal barbs are nearly always cut obliquely, and on 
one side of the base only, whereas in Bering sea they are usually arranged 
symmetrically around the base; but the two varieties evidently have a 
common origin. 
The Diomede Island harpoon-head ( See Plate XIII), however, was 
unique in one respect. It was etched with fine scroll-work, concentric 
circles, and curvilinear designs quite different from the usual Eskimo 
carving. Similar etchings were present on an ivory object, highly fossilized, 
gathered from the surface of an overturned rubbish-heap at Little Diomede 
island, and still other examples, including two more harpoon-heads, were 
purchased from the natives {See Plate XII). Scroll-work of the same 
character distinguished a number of specimens purchased by Dr. Ales 
Hrdlicka, of the Smithsonian Institution, at St. Lawrence island and other 
places around Bering sea. It was present, too, on a whaling charm pur- 
chased by Dr. G. B. Gordon at Nome, and illustrated by him in the Journal 
of the University of Pennsylvania Museum, vol. vii, 1916, p. 61, a specimen, 
it may be mentioned, practically identical with one obtained by the writer 
