Page:Archæology of the Central Eskimos.djvu/378
very different ages; whilst some are extremely old, almost flattened out to obliteration and overgrown with grass and moss, there are others which were comparatively well preserved and seemed to have been inhabited fairly recently. The specimens found confirm this difference of age. The numbers of the houses are reckoned from east to west.
House ruin 1. Very flattened, circular, 4m in diameter; a few stones and whale bones project. Not excavated.
Image missingFig. 74.Kuk. House Ruin III before Excavation.
House ruin II. Forms a low, moss-filled hollow, 3m in diameter, with doorway. Not excavated.
House ruin III. The best preserved of all the houses. The doorway and part of the walls were still standing; the roof had fallen in but, when it was removed, the interior of the house was found to be practically undisturbed. Fig. 74 shows the ruin with the door-way before excavation; high up to the left is a store house. Fig. 75 is the interior of the eastern part of the house after the collapsed roofing had been removed. Fig. 76 is a ground plan of the house.
House III has three platform spaces, of which that to the east is the largest; in the corner between the two smaller platforms a fairly high store room has been built. The walls are built of a skeleton of lime-stone slabs and whale skulls and covered outside with turf. The lowest stone slabs are placed on edge in a row, and over these a course of horizontal slabs, thus making a number of small cavities in the edges of the platforms. Only one whale skull was still in place,