"Until the results of Doctor Hrdlicka's Alaskan reconnaissance were first made known to science it had been generally assumed that Alaskan and Canadian subboreal regions were archeologically barren. It had been currently accepted that only as one approached the great river valleys of the Skeena, the Fraser, and the Columbia could anthropological exploration be conducted to advantage. One might expect to uncover cemeteries and ancient village sites only there where a dense and sedentary population had long been established. Through the discovery of ancient village sites and centers of population in the lower and middle Yukon River Valley, Doctor Hrdlicka has extended the northern archeological horizon into the sub-Arctic.

"Of the many sites examined, the old village site at Bonasila, 18 miles below the confluence of the Anvik and Yukon Rivers, yielded the most interesting data. Crudely flaked implements of trap rock with cutting edges showing evidence of chipping and grinding were uncovered. These implements are unique among Alaskan artifacts and have no relationship with known types of Eskimo or Indian stonework. In the shaping technic employed by their aboriginal makers; in form, and in type; and, generally, in their undeveloped character, the stone artifacts from Bonasila and other ancient archeological sites on the middle Yukon may be classified as primitive neolithic.

"The stone implements uncovered at Bonasila are so crudely fashioned and are apparently of such an improvised nature as to suggest an extreme conservatism in culture development, or perhaps a degeneration, due largely to lack of better materials. Due to the lack of basalt, jadeite, or other hard stone in the valley of the lower middle Yukon, recourse was had to sandstone and trap rock by the primitive makers of stone axes and celts.

"Crude pottery vessels and potsherds were discovered associated with the objects of stone. This ware incorporates elementary decorative designs distinct from the known historic Eskimo or Indian types of pottery decoration. There can be no intimation that this ware is archaic or that it belongs to any archaic culture offshoot from farther south. It therefore becomes a question of some unknown earlier Asiatic culture connection that manifested itself in crude forms of flaked and ground stone implements and in unique pottery forms. It is uncertain that the ancient fossil ivory culture of northwest Alaska, of which Doctor Hrdlicka has brought in some excellent examples, is in any manner associated with the primitive neolithic stone and pottery forms uncovered at Bonasila. It is established, however, beyond a doubt that both cultures and types of artifacts are Asiatic in origin and have little or no connection with the culture of the western Eskimo.

"The Eskimos of the lower Yukon Valley made extensive use of slate and of jadeite in the production of their polished knives and celts. Slate knives and polished celts of jadeite are characteristic of Eskimoan culture throughout the whole of its extent in Alaska. Each of these materials as well as the finished products shaped from them were subjects of native barter. Eskimos often undertook long journeys for their procurement. It is therefore noteworthy that no single object fashioned from slate or jadeite and but few points of fossilized ivory were recovered at any of the sites characterized by the primitive stone culture and pottery of the Bonasila type.

"The most characteristic finds at Bonasila are the crudely flaked implements of stone, some of which show incipient chipping and grinding. The coarse type of pottery is unlike that of the modern Eskimo in tempering, firing, and decorative design.

"The stone culture of the site, although rich in forms, is deficient in technical development and is scarcely worthy of being classed as neolithic. There were found in numbers the following types of artifacts: Circular, discoidal stone pebbles with rim fractures due to use; river wash pebbles of irregular form used as improvised scrapers and hammerstones; basaltic, discoidal hammerstones with abraded edges and pitted at the center; large flake saws of trachyte (trap rock) triangular in section but provided with sharply fractured cutting edges; slender flaked fragments of trap rock tapered to the form of wedges with intentionally worked end sections and cutting edges; crudely flaked stone knives with evidence of secondary chipping at cutting edges; other knives of thin slabs of trap rock with flaked and bilaterally ground beveled cutting edges; oblong axes of flaked sandstone with hafting notches struck off at the edges midway from the base; abrading tools of sandstone; celts of sandstone with ground and beveled working edge and notched for hafting as an ax; stone scrapers with ground and beveled cutting edges; fragmentary perforators of stone; re-chipped, flaked knives shaped by grinding; roughly worked, multiple-grooved hammers or mauls; and many stone objects unformed and unworked but classified generally as hammerstones.

THE POTTERY

"About a hundred pottery shards and smaller pottery vessels were recovered from the site at Bonasila. Pottery vessels representative of the Bonasila culture were shaped out of the solid and show no trace of coiling. In this respect they conform to the generalized north Asiatic and Eskimo ware. There is, however, no check stamp decorative design that is applied with a paddle by the Eskimo nor evidence that pottery vessels had been built up about a basketry base. The paste is light buff or gray in color, the buff ware being better fired and of the same color on the inside, while the gray ware is either gray or black on the inner surface. A well-defined unfired area covers one-half of the sectional diameter. Both buff and gray wares show evidence of better firing than in modern Eskimo pottery. Tempering is of coarse fragments of steatite, which is much more durable than tempering materials such as blood, feathers, and ashes formerly employed by the primitive Eskimo potter.

"The pottery from Bonasila is utilitarian and consists of shallow spherical lamps, globose bowls, and cooking pots without feet or bases. The ware is coarse, side walls and bottom varying from 1 to 2 centimeters in sectional thickness. This type of pottery is practically duplicated in shards recovered by Doctor Hrdlicka from what is now Eskimo territory in the Yukon Valley near the Russian Mission. It is probable that further search would bring to light an extensive region yielding this type of ancient pottery of distinctive design and unrelated either to TinnÉ or Eskimo ware.

"Decorative attempts consist of bold incised parallel transverse lines on the upper sector of the outer surface of the vessel. Deep corrugations appear on the inside of the rim flare. Both corrugations and incised line decorations were made with a paddle or wood splinter shaped for the purpose. Some of the shards have deeply incised punctations irregularly encircling the outer surface of the vessel just below the rim extension.

"Shallow spherical pottery lamps accompanied surface burials at Bonasila. These lamps have a less durable tempering material than the other pottery fragments recovered. The paste is porous and is poorly fired. Decorative designs incised on the interior surface of the lamps are reminiscent of typical Eskimo punctate designs as traced on the inner circumference of rectilinear or curvilinear etchings on ivory and bone. It is very probable that these pottery lamps are of a later date and are of Eskimoan handicraft.

THE ALASKAN GROOVED STONE AX
[Pl. 10]

"The grooved stone ax is a typical New World implement. Its distribution is limited to tribes of the eastern maize area, the Pueblo tribes of the Southwest, the Athapascans, and the northern woodlands tribes. Elsewhere in America grooved stone implements of any description are rare, although not unknown. The groove for the attachment of cord or sinew binding is common also to the stone adze, which is characteristic of Indian tribes of the Pacific Northwest and of the Eskimo of Arctic America. The distribution of the stone adze is more intensive but is much less extensive than is that of the grooved stone ax and appears to be an environmental form borrowed from the Arctic tribes by the Indian of southeast Alaska and of British Columbia.

"The double-bitted, multiple-grooved stone ax has two areas of distribution in North America. One of these is the country of the northeastern woodlands Indians, extending as far south as the Central Atlantic States. The other area of distribution is the extreme northwest, or the mainland of Alaska.

"In the collection brought to the National Museum from Alaska by Doctor Hrdlicka are eight grooved stone implements. All but one of these have cutting edges for use as axes or adzes. The exception, Cat. No. 332809, U.S.N.M., is a grooved spherical stone maul or club 9.5 centimeters (3.7 inches) long and 7.5 centimeters (2.9 inches) in sectional diameter. This grooved object was found near Tanana on the beach of the Yukon River. Like the grooved stone axes in Doctor Hrdlicka's collection, the groove is incomplete. A flattened space of approximately 2 centimeters is left un-grooved for the hafting of a flat surfaced handle end with binding, which is passed around the transverse groove and then through a hole in the wooden handle.

"Three single-grooved, double-bitted stone axes were collected from various points on the Yukon River. These are of interest because of their similar grooving and double cutting edges. Each is identical in form, each has been shaped by pecking, except in the sector near the cutting edges where they have been sharpened and polished by grinding. Between the raised borders of the centrally pecked groove and the cutting edges the surface has been shaped to a slight concavity by pecking. In Cat. No. 332805, U.S.N.M., this concavity is replaced by a well-defined convex bevel. The pecked groove is at right angles to the longitudinal axis and is comparatively shallow but has a wide diameter of 2 centimeters or more. The material is uniformly of basalt. The axes are 20 centimeters or more long, while the sectional diameter varies from 6 to 10 centimeters according to whether the ax is flattened or oval in section.

"Grooved, double-bitted stone axes similar to those collected by Doctor Hrdlicka from the Middle Yukon region have since become known also from stations farther south in Alaska. One was plowed up in a field near Matanuska and is now in the chamber of commerce exhibit at Anchorage, while another was collected in 1927 by the writer from near Chitna, Alaska. This Alaskan type of grooved ax is practically identical with that of the central Atlantic seaboard States, as figured by Walter Hough in the Proceedings of the United States National Museum, volume 60, article 9, page 14.

"Another grooved type of stone object brought to the National Museum by Doctor Hrdlicka is a stone war club of unusual type. It was found on the Yukon River beach 1½ miles below the Mission at Tanana. It is 20 centimeters (7.9 inches) long and is slender, the maximum sectional diameter being but 3.5 centimeters (1.4 inches). Like the single-grooved axes, it was shaped by pecking, but much of the surface was also ground. The reverse or hafting surface is flat; the obverse is convexly tapered to sharp cutting edges which are at right angles to the haft. The material is basalt. The hafting grooves, two in number, are comparatively deep and closely spaced. As to form this stone weapon is unique, appearing, so far as is known to the writer, nowhere else on the American Continent. It has been entered on the records of the National Museum as Cat. No. 332807, U.S.N.M.

"One form of the double-bitted, multiple-grooved stone axes resembles closely ivory forms made from walrus tusks in the Bering Sea region. This form also gives evidence of secondary modification, specimens having been broken intentionally to reduce the tool to a simple adze. The material is basalt and its range in the north is limited to the Eskimo area, but becomes widespread to the south in southeastern Alaska and in British Columbia. The form of this widely diffused stone adze is approximated in a series of broken stone axes collected by Doctor Hrdlicka. Two such broken and originally double-bitted axes, Cat. Nos. 332806 and 332810, U.S.N.M., were collected from the banks of the Yukon at an old village site below Anvik. These axes are broken with a crude irregular fracture just above the upper transverse groove. Another stone ax, Cat. No. 332812, U.S.N.M., is from Ruby, Alaska, and is practically identical with the double-bitted but single-grooved stone ax from Tanana.

"It would appear from this brief presentation that there is a remarkable similarity of form, approaching identity, in the ancient stone axes from the river valleys of central Alaska. Whether the particular ax has one cutting edge or is double-bitted; whether it is provided with one or with two parallel transverse hafting grooves, the general identity of form remains. The striking thing about the presence of the double-bitted ax among archeological finds from central Alaska is that we do not find it represented in such numbers anywhere until it again reappears in the Atlantic seaboard States. The very interesting cultural objects discovered by Doctor Hrdlicka and supplemented by my collection in 1927 show that Alaska is far from sterile or fully known archeologically and make further exploration both promising and important."