Rainey, Froelich - Eskimo Prehistory: the Okvik Site (1941)

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Rainey, Froelich - Eskimo Prehistory: the Okvik Site (1941)

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Author: Rainey, Froelich G.

Title: Eskimo Prehistory: The Okvik Site on the Punuk Islands 

Year: 1941

Publisher: New York: Anthropological papers of the American Museum of Natural History ; ; v. 37, pt. 4.

Pages: 116

Source: American Museum of Natural History

Description: "This chain of three small islands, less than two and one-half miles in length, lies in Bering Sea just four miles off the eastern end of St. Lawrence Island and about one hundred eighty miles south of Bering Straits (Fig. 1). In a walrus skin boat powered by a small out-board engine Eskimo can pass from the Punuk Islands along St. Lawrence to the Siberian mainland in approximately twenty hours without losing sight of land, if the weather is clear" (1941:463).  

"This account of the Okvik site on the Punuk Islands in northern Bering Sea is concerned essentially with the description of one more form of an Arctic coast culture and its relation to other types which have been described in detail in the same ecologic zone. The site was discovered by Otto Geist in 1931 and partially excavated in 1934 by Geist and Ivar Skarland. Since that time Eskimo from St. Lawrence Island have dug there each summer in search of "fossil" walrus ivory which they use in carving salable ivory objects. The large collections of implements obtained by them at the site have been purchased by the University of Alaska" (1941:460).  

 
 
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