Page:Archæology of the Central Eskimos.djvu/462

In the summer of 1916 Capt. George Comer, who commanded the refuge ship of the Crocker Land Expedition, found a large refuse heap at the Eskimo settlement Umanaq, near the station of Thule, North Star Bay, Wolstenholme Sound, in the Cape York district, North-west Greenland. Excavations were made in this refuse heap, which was given the name of "Comer's Midden", by Capt. Comer himself and also by the members of the Second Thule Expedition, Knud Rasmussen and Lauge Koch, and by P. Freuchen, then the manager of the Thule station. The very considerable collection of specimens thus gathered was divided, the part excavated by Capt. Comer going to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where it was described by Dr. Clark Wissler,^[1] whilst the collection excavated by the Second Thule Expedition was presented to the National Museum in Copenhagen. It is this collection that will be described in the following.

In Wissler's work Dr. E. T. Hovey describes the locality "Comer's Midden", and there is not much to add to this that is new; 1 myself visited the place during my brief stay at Thule in August 1921, but having no time to make excavations or examinations, I agree with Dr. Hovey's description. As will be seen from this, the refuse heap lies on a slope down towards the shore in front of three Eskimo winter houses which are still inhabited. The situation does not indicate that there has been any notable change in the sea level since the heap was formed. According to Lauge Koch I will here describe a profile through the thickest part of the refuse heap:

A. 20 cm. Modern layer of refuse, the basic substance of which is dog excrement, bones of large and small seals, walrus, narwhal, seal and bear hair, fragments of implements still in use, a few caribou