Page:Archæology of the Central Eskimos.djvu/503

pointed stick, 5.2 cm long, with a hole in one end, and a small roll of birch bark, with a row of holes along one edge.

The find contains nothing that indicates contact with Europeans, except perhaps the piece of iron in the amulet box from the comparatively new house 10; this may, on the other hand, be meteoric iron. The absence of stone blades for weapons and knives as well as the character of the blade sockets, point, however, in the direction of there having been access to metal, possibly copper; the distance from here to the rich copper deposits in Bathurst Inlet is not particularly great either. Presumably, however, bone (caribou leg bone) has been used to an extensive degree for blades in weapons, as in the grave find from Malerualik which is described later; suitable kinds of stone, slate, jade, flint, have apparently not been available.

If we now compare the Malerualik find with the other old Central Eskimo finds, we see that there is no doubt whatever that it belongs. to the Thule culture. Nearly all its types of implements are well known from that culture: the harpoon heads, ice picks, handle for drag line, wound plugs, arrow heads with conical tang and two knobs, side prongs for bird spears with barbs on both sides, peg for throwing board, salmon spears, leister teeth, gull hooks, bola balls, salmon decoy, sledge shoes of whalebone, snow knives with two shoulders, the knife handles, adzes, wedges, hand drills, ulo handles, scraper of caribou scapula, the round soapstone · cooking pots with lines on the rim, earthen vessel, sucking tube of bird bone, bodkin of seal bone, amulet box, stone ball, bone piece for games, all are types that are common to — in some respects characteristic of — the Thule culture. But besides these there were found some new ones, not previously known from the Thule finds: two-bladed kayak paddle, ice scoop, bull roarer, besides the fact that the presence of the fish hook was confirmed; these elements are thus attached to the Thule culture through this find.

If we now proceed to determine the chronological position of the find within the Thule culture we will soon see that it is the Naujan find that approaches it most closely. The harpoon heads show the Naujan find's two principal forms undoubtedly predominating, without any of the types developed later from these; the fish hook, the knife handles, the spliced drill haft, the prevalence of the round cooking pots, the piece of pottery, the bone piece, the stone ball and still other features attach the Malerualik find nearest to the Naujan find. However, there are a few features which indicate that in cer-