Composite Masks: Chinese and Eskimo

Abstract

Of all prehistoric Eskimo cultures Ipiutak is the one with closest ties to the Old World. Its antler and ivory arrowheads, lances, daggers and knives with inset stone side blades have close analogies in early Neolithic and Mesolithic cultures of Siberia and western Europe; and its flint industry, like that of the older Near Ipiutak, was an outgrowth of the microlithic Denbigh Flint complex of the Arctic Small Tool tradition which, ultimately of Asiatic origin, is now generally regarded as the principal source from which the northern patterns of Eskimo culture were derived.