Page:Archæology of the Central Eskimos.djvu/485

House ruin 2. Also very flattened and overgrown and with few stones. There were found: an ice pick; a wound plug; fragment of arrow head with barb; indeterminable piece of bone; all of antler and caribou bone. Many bones of caribou, seal and bird.

House ruin 3. Almost circular with doorway facing south. Seems to have been built exclusively of stone and to have had a self-supporting roof like the houses of the Polar Eskimos, it also having the "tikutit" characteristic of these houses — stones which project from the walls about where the main platform begins and which support the beams.^[1] The house was in a very collapsed condition and was difficult Image missingFig. 106.House Ruins 4–5, Malerualik. to measure; floor and platform could not be separated; seems to have been inhabited only a short time, as the bottom under the house, sand and gravel, was soon reached, hardly any refuse layer having been formed and only comparatively few bones being found.

In it were found: Ice pick; wound plug; two arrow heads with barbs, of caribou leg bone; sledge shoe of antler; knife handle with small end blade socket and suspension hole; two meat forks or similar bone objects; piece of mounting or the like. All of antler and caribou bone.

House ruin 4. Fig. 106 shows the ground plan of the two adjoining houses 4 and 5. The walls were built of turf and stone; the roof had fallen into the houses and seemed to have consisted entirely of flat stones and to have been self-supporting. Originally these two houses seem to have formed one house with two platforms and a common doorway; two large stones, a and b, show clearly enough the entrance from the one house to the other. Later, house 5 has had its own doorway, the opening between them was closed and what was formerly platform now became floor, and vice versa. At d and e there appear to have been fireplaces a little above the height of the platform inside the house, built upon a large flat stone; similar fireplaces have been found in other houses here. C is a large whale bone.

After the fallen-in roofing stones had been removed, house 4 was excavated to a depth of 1.2 m, and there were found:

A harpoon head of Thule type 3 (Pl. 82.2); ice pick; finger rest; 2 bone blades of leg bone for lances or similar; wound plug (Pl. 82.4); 8 arrow