Alaska -- Antiquities; Eskimos; Eskimos -- Anthropometry; Indians of North America -- Alaska; Indians of North America -- Yukon
"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
Hrdlička. 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 Hrdlička 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."
ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE YUKON
Notes on the physique of the Yukon natives are found in the reports
of all the explorers of the river, but they are imperfect and of
little scientific value; the principal ones are given below.[26]
Anthropometric observations on the living people of the middle and
lower Yukon, with its tributaries, are nonexistent.[27] As to crania,
there are a few measurements on two "Yukon Indian" skulls (No. 7530,
and probably No. 7531), and on three crania of the Yukon Eskimo, by
Jeffries Wyman (Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist., 1868, XI, 452); on one
"Ingaleet" and three "Mahlemut" or Norton Sound Eskimo skulls by George
A. Otis (List of Specimens, etc., 35); and on four skulls collected
by Dall, one from Nulato and the rest presumably from St. Michael, by
Hrdlička (Catal. of Crania, p. 30, Nos. 242925, 242899, 242901, 242936).
FOOTNOTES:
[26] Glazunof (Wrangell, Stat. und Ethnog. Nachr., 146-147): "The men
are big, brunette, with bristly black hair."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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