Page:Archæology of the Central Eskimos.djvu/505

Kangerarfigssuaq is an old settlement, about 5 km SE. of Malerualik; Knud Rasmussen visited the place and counted eleven house ruins; in one of them whalebone was used as building material. The ruins here lay at a considerable distance from the sea — about 400 metres, but as the land is extremely flat, the height above s. l. can hardly be estimated at more than 5–6 metres. One of the house ruins was excavated by Eskimos, and there were found: a harpoon head of Thule type 2, although with only one barb; opposite the line hole, on the sides, there are small knobs, and from the line hole an ornamental line leads forward; the lashing about the shaft socket has passed through slots; the specimen is very decayed. An ice pick; a small peg for a throwing board like Naujan Pl. 33.17; a broken arrow head with conical tang and rudimentary barb, and another arrow head, 22 cm long, with pyramid shaped tang and a large blade, without barbs. Two fragments of very thin, slightly curved, round bone sticks, one with a small distension before it runs to a point, the other gradually pointed (snow probe, breathing hole searcher?). Three knife handles, two with end blade sockets and suspension holes, the third one a very thin, curved little antler point, 9.6 cm long, in the broad end of which is a small blade socket with a piece of copper in it. A heavy wedge, a piece of a rounded soapstone cooking pot, four indeterminable objects of bone and a large piece of a whale jaw bone; all the other objects are of antler.

That this find belongs to the Thule culture can be seen — apart from the houses — from, for instance, the harpoon head; the height above the sea, however, shows that it must be of a later phase than the Malerualik find, or at any rate that the houses here must have been built later than the Malerualik houses. Therefore it is worthy of note that the two arrow heads in this find differ from the Malerualik heads, the one in only having a rudimentary barb (like Naujan), the other in having no barb (like the later finds). For both geological and archaeological reasons we must thus look upon the settlement at Kangerarfigssuaq as being later than Malerualik.

From the environs of Kangerarfigssuaq have come: the harpoon head fig. 109; it is of antler, of Thule type 3, with two holes for the lashing; in it is a large blade of caribou leg bone with the hint of a