Page:Archæology of the Central Eskimos.djvu/463

antlers; on the surface iron and tin conserve cans; no baleen. This layer runs smoothly into

B. 30 cm. Brownish layer with many bones (caribou, seal, narwhal, walrus, more rarely whale), hair (seal, dog); blends imperceptibly with

C. 30 cm. Rather darker colour; at the top very poor in baleen, but the number increases downwards; whalebone is not rare; bones of walrus and narwhal not found. Practically nothing has been collected from this layer, which runs evenly into

D. 20 cm. Darker, characterised by an overwhelming quantity of baleen, with which the whole layer is so to say interwoven. Pieces of wood are very common as also are bones of seal, especially small seals; there are bones of dog, walrus and narwhal and, fairly frequently, whale bones; feathers, seal and dog hair and at one place human hair. Is rather sharply outlined against

E. Black gravel mixed with moss with no, or only few, bones and baleen; not completely excavated.

The greater part of the collection was taken from D, and it is mostly these specimens which will be described in the following; the very few objects from C will also be mentioned, but not the few, newer objects from layers A and B; there is nothing from E.

Of objects known to have been taken from D there are 200 specimens; from C 6 specimens; in addition, however, there are 53 specimens stated to have come from "Comer's Kitchen Midden", "the Thule excavations" or "Same Settlement as the foregoing"; although it is not expressly stated, we must look upon it as being fairly certain that these also came from the old strata in the refuse heap. However, in the following a note will always be made when a specimen is not definitely known to have come from layer D.

If the Danish collection from Comer's Midden does not comprise so many specimens as the American, it has this advantage that it was systematically excavated as regards the division of the layers, a defect which Wissler (p. 163) regrets as concerns the American collection.

Of harpoon heads there are 14 specimens; of these the majority — 9 — belong to the Thule types. To Thule type 1 belong three specimens (Pl. 78.1 (L 7546^[1]), see also Wissler fig. 24 b); the figured specimen is a finely preserved example of this type, very thin, with the line hole directly from side to side, open shaft socket, slanting