Cultural Continuities of Eskimos

Abstract

AbstractAlthough the archaeology of the “Eskimo” area need not be that of Eskimos, groups of people, by whatever name they are called, have lived continuously for at least 4000 years in Greenland, around the northern rim of Hudson Bay, on the American side of Bering Strait, and probably around the Pacific shores of Southwest Alaska. Shorter sequences of continuous occupation are known in many parts of the range, including St. Lawrence Island. Meaningful cross-analyses may be made from the coastal or near-coastal sites in which are preserved house, tent, burial, and cache remains, and sometimes whole villages. Sites of the interior are usually accumulations of projectile points and cutting-tools at game crossings, though some, for example, Firth River, Anaktuvuk Pass, and Dismal Lake, afford limited stratigraphy or means of seriation.A sequence of cultural phases, perhaps those of two regional traditions, is emerging in the Bering Strait region. With this region as a focus, nine horizons are considered, beginning with the earliest: (1) Palisades I and British Mountain; (2) Palisades II, Tuktu, and Denali Highway; (3) Denbigh Flint complex and other microblade sites; (4) Old Whaling culture; (5) Choris, Early Aleut, Kachemak Bay I, and Sarqaq; (6) Norton and Dorset; (7) Okvik, Ipiutak, and Kachemak Bay II; (8) Old Bering Sea and Birnirk; (9) Punuk, Western Thule, and Thule. The two traditions are: (1) Palisades I, Palisades II, to Old Whaling culture, based on a distinctive flint-working technique, and later, the hafting of notched flints to wooden shafts; (2) Denbigh Flint complex, Battle Rock, Ipiutak, to Birnirk, based on side blading and engraving styles. The second of these American traditions parallels in its later period at least the Okvik to Birnirk tradition of the Asian side of the Bering Strait.The earliest evidence consists of crude chopper-tools and percussion bifacing, followed much later by notched points, then successively by the combination of micro-blades, side-blades, and burins; whaling and deep-house building; pottery and the first midden mounds; elaboration of engraved art and ceremony; and finally by a specialized but utilitarian “Eskimo” form of culture. Minor climatic changes and related shifts in the food supply account for some of the shifts of cultural emphasis through time.