Page:Archæology of the Central Eskimos.djvu/224

After I had made the excavations in Repulse Bay and on Southampton Island in the summer of 1922 and, with the assistance of Freuchen and Bangsted there was a prospect of making a few smaller excavations in the same region (Chesterfield Inlet, Vansittart Island), it was of importance to me to make an excavation in Baffin Land in order to see whether the old stage of culture, which I had found at Naujan, was also to be found there. As my field of operations I chose Ponds Inlet in the north of Baffin Land; this place was chosen for the following reasons: 1. It is about midway between Repulse Bay and the Cape York district in Greenland, and an excavation there would thus form a connecting link between the find at Naujan and the find from Comer's Midden at Thule. 2. From Eskimos at Repulse Bay and at Iglulik I had heard that there were house ruins there. 3. In addition, this would make it possible for me to continue the geographic work in northern Baffin Land which I had commenced the year before, and to study the local, little known Eskimos. 4. Furthermore, there were the purely practical reasons: from our headquarters it was comparatively easy to get there and to engage a man who knew the locality as guide; at Ponds Inlet there is a Hudson's Bay Company's trading station which I could use as a base, and from which I and the collections could get home on the company's ship in the autumn of 1923.

Leaving Danish Island the 22nd March 1923, Ponds Inlet Station was reached on May 21st; owing to the unusually early spring I was already able on June 4th to commence the work of excavation at Mitimatalik, a little east of the trading station, while at the same time I made ethnographic studies. At first the work progressed very slowly and without much profit, and as the Eskimos told me that the best place to excavate would probably be Button Point, on Bylot Island, I proceeded there on June 11th, excavated 24 sq. metres there