Archaeological Work in Alaska

Ten years ago, in 1919, Mr. W. B. Van Valin was engaged to make an Eskimo collection for the Museum at Point Barrow, the northernmost point of Alaska. His helpers one day observed human bones protruding from a mound which had always been supposed by Eskimo and white men to be of natural origin. Excavation, however , revealed a charnel house in which members of a former people had been buried together with their personal belongings. These human remains and the associated objects were sent to the Museum where study revealed the fact that the physical type was very different from that of the present Eskimo of that region, and that the specimens were typical of an earlier population known to archaeologists as the Thule Culture. The form of the houses and many of the objects were, however, unique.

A year ago the Museum was informed that other mounds of the same type had been discovered in the same region and that the Eskimo were engaged in excavating them and selling the finds to passing travelers; that only a few mounds were still untouched, and these doomed to early destruction. With the help of the National Museum and the War Department communication with Point Barrow was establish ed by radio and an agreement was reached with a local resident, Mr. Alfred H. Hopson, to excavate several mounds during the summer.

Archaeological work in the Arctic is no pleasure. The ground is permanently frozen and thaws to an average depth of only three inches each day. These three inches of mud, slime and muck are scratched through by the fingers of Eskimo workmen, the only men who will do such unpleasant work. The work is necessarily slow, tedious and dirty. Only during June, July and August does the ground thaw, and Mr. Hopson wrote, “It has been a very poor year for this kind of work; we have had cold weather continuously. This resulted in the necessity of picking everything out by hand from the frozen ground and ice, necessarily slow work.”

Both the human remains and the objects associated with them are preserved unusually well in the frozen soil, some wooden specimens being perfectly kept. The excavations this year resulted in the discovery of eight burials, but the objects and implements recovered were not numerous or impressive although of great scientific value. It was determined definitely that the structures are charnel houses and not dwellings, and important notes on their architecture were made. Some larger dwelling h uses which were not used for burials were also excavated and studied; these possess tunnels leading from the semi-subterranean room to the side of the mound. Driftwood and whale’s jawbones were the materials employed in the construction of both houses and graves.

The unique specimen illustrated in Plate VI is believed by the present Eskimo to have been an implement used to pound and scrape blubber to obtain lamp-oil.