Development of Alaskan Eskimo Culture
(2000 B.C. - A.D. 100)

During the 3,000 years that the Palaeoeskimos were developing their unique culture in arctic Canada, quite different developments were occurring in Alaska. The archaeological picture there appears to have been much more complex and is poorly understood. On the Aleutian Islands, there was continuous but gradual change, which culminated in the culture of the historic Aleuts. On the Pacific coast of Alaska, a technology based largely on ground slate tools was evolved and may have been ancestral to the Historic Eskimo cultures of the region. The western and northern coasts of Alaska were occupied for most of the second millennium B.C. by ASTt people with cultures similar to those of arctic Canada. Around 1000 B.C., however, there is a break in the record of human activity that lasts for a few centuries. Following this apparent hiatus, a series of groups (Old Whaling, Choris and Norton cultures) appear whose technologies are a curious mixture of elements that seem to have come from different sources: chipped stone tools apparently derived from those of the ASTt; items such as ground slate tools, stone lamps and labrets (ornamental lip-plugs) similar to those used by the people of the Pacific coast; and pottery stamped with check designs similar to that used by the contemporaneous Neolithic peoples of eastern Siberia.

The latest of these groups, the Norton people of approximately 500 B.C. to A.D. 500, were almost certainly Eskimos, since we can trace undoubted archaeological continuity from them to the Eskimo peoples of the historic period. If the Norton people were the descendants of ASTt groups who had learned much from the sea-hunting cultures of South Alaska, then we can assume that the ASTt people were Eskimos. However, if the Norton people were South Alaskans who moved northwards to the coast of the Bering Sea and learned their stoneworking skills from a remnant ASTt population, as well as learning how to make pottery through contact with Siberian groups, then the ASTt people were not ancestral Eskimos. In that case, Eskimo traditions would be traced back to the peoples who had occupied the Pacific coast of Alaska for the past several millennia. The present limitations of our archaeological knowledge regarding the Norton people do not permit the resolution of this issue.

Whatever their origins, around A.D. 1 some Norton groups in the vicinity of Bering Strait began to develop very sophisticated techniques for hunting sea mammals. In the villages of the Old Bering Sea culture, we find the remains of skin boats, both the kayak and the umiak (figure). The latter was an open vessel, some eight to ten metres long, which could be used both to move camp and to hunt the large bowhead whale. The invention of the float-harpoon by this group effected important changes in the hunting of sea mammals. With this gear, the line attached to the harpoon did not have to be held in the hunter's hand. Rather, it was tied to a float made of inflated sealskin. Previously, some large sea mammals could not be safely and successfully secured through the use of the hand-held line, but now the hunter could harpoon the enormous creatures and let them drag the float until they tired. The prey could then be killed and retrieved. Using such equipment, the Old Bering Sea people hunted large numbers of walrus, whose ivory constituted the basic material for a large part of their technology. Many of the sophisticated gadgets of later Eskimo culture can be traced to this period: snow goggles to protect the hunter from snow blindness; ice-creepers tied beneath the feet to prevent slipping on smooth ice; imitation seal flippers used to scratch on the ice in order to attract seals; the compound bow with a cable of twisted sinew attached to the back in order to increase its power; barbed arrowheads of bone or antler; and knives of ground slate.

Perhaps as the result of new and more efficient hunting technology, patterns of settlement changed. Small, permanent winter villages consisted of several houses excavated into the ground, with walls and roofs of driftwood covered with turf and with sunken cold-trap entrance tunnels. These houses were heated with large blubber lamps made of pottery, and cooking was done in ceramic pots. Such dwellings must have been much more comfortable than any previously used in arctic regions. They could, however, be adopted only because of the availability of large amounts of food that could be stored for use during the winter. The wealth of the Old Bering Sea people is also reflected in the elaborate style of art that decorates many of their tools and weapons.

The descendants of the Old Bering Sea people continued to develop this way of life until the historic period in the Bering Strait area. By around A.D. 500, this type of culture spread to the north coast of Alaska, either as a result of the migration of people or simply due to the diffusion of ideas through trading contacts. Although North Alaska was generally not as rich as Bering Strait, the people here had one important resource that they could now begin to exploit. Each spring the large bowhead whales migrate eastward along the coast of North Alaska, through narrow leads in the ice. In these leads they are very vulnerable to hunters, who even today park their umiaks on the edge of the lead and wait for the whales. When the slow-moving animals are spotted, the boats are quickly launched and the whales harpooned. Each successful kill provides several tonnes of meat and blubber. Between A.D. 500 and 1000, the people of North Alaska learned this style of hunting and established large villages of semisubterranean houses at good whale-hunting localities (figure). These people were the immediate ancestors of the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic and Greenland.