Page:Archæology of the Central Eskimos.djvu/22

the sun already had considerable power, however. As a result the work of the first few days was mostly snow-shovelling; but when the snow had been removed the ground was still frozen and the houses were filled with water from the melting snow. Not until the upper, swampy layer of moss had been cut away so that the sun could get at the dark ground could excavating begin, a little at a time, in house VIII. Naturally, progress was slow at the beginning; the unusually late and cold season also contributed to this, and even on July 14th another ruin emerged from the snow! In all we excavated Image missingFig. 1.The Naujan Valley 14. June 1922. the ruins of 12 houses and an area of 60 sq. metres of a refuse heap about one metre deep which had been formed in front of three of the houses. Of these 12 houses, however, only 7 were undisturbed; in five of them the Eskimos had been digging the year before and had disturbed things very much. In all about 3,000 specimens were found by excavating at this settlement, although about 800 of them were unfinished objects, broken indeterminable pieces, etc. Besides the excavations proper we took measurements of the various ruins, mapped the settlement and its environs, took photographs and examined about 50 graves, among which we found two fairly complete skeletons, about 20 skulls and about 50 archaeological specimens which had been buried with the dead.

Our departure for Southampton Island took place so suddenly that the excavations were not completed to the extent desired; in