Harpoon head

Due to high volume of harpoon heads found in excavations, and their constant distinctive innovations [3], harpoon heads have been particularly apt to determine cultural eras [4] known together as the Northern Maritime Tradition. [5] Archaeologists Henry B. Collins and Otto Geist were the first to conduct professional archaeological excavations on Sivuqaq (St. Lawrence Island) in the 1920s. Their findings of exquisitely carved ivory objects altered the academic understandings of Arctic ancestors and provided an incentive to revise the Arctic history with the Bering Sea harpoon head forming a crucial chronological and ethnic analytical marker. [6] Collins, who was an assistant curator of the Ethnology Division at the US National Museum (Smithsonian Institution), became instrumental in outlining distinct cultures which he coined Okvik, Old Bering Sea I, II and III. Although not always recognised in the literature, Collins – and other archaeologists for that matter – relied heavily on the help and guidance of St. Lawrence Yupik Pauk Silook. Geist already had coined the Punuk culture in reference to the excavations he made on Punuk Island. Like all cultural eras that constitute the Northern Maritime Tradition, the names have derived from localities and were given by American or Canadian archaeologists. Collins, thus, established the term “Old Bering Sea” in a reference to Canadian anthropologist Diamond Jenness’ archaeological finds on the Little Diomede Island in the Bering Strait. Jenness subsequently termed the objects he excavated as belonging to a previously unknown “Bering Sea culture”. [7] Whereas Collins’ typology of the Bering Sea has remained persistent in provenance by museums, art galleries, and art collectors akin, more recently archaeologists have challenged Collins ideas by pointing out the shortcomings in his initial analysis of harpoon heads that was at the base for establishing a unilineal order of Arctic ancestral cultures. [8] Owen K. Mason, amongst them, has redefined a multilineal chronology of Northern Maritime Traditions with Iputiak (200-800 AD), Old Bering Sea with Okvik, Uelen and Ekven sites (500-1200 AD), Punuk (800-1200 AD), Birnik (800-1300 AD), and Thule (1200-1800 AD). [9] Here you can see a clear co-existence of Ipiutak and Okvik-Old Bering Sea (with Uelen and Ekven) cultures and Old Bering Sea with Punuk and Birnik cultures for several centuries.

Riddles, however, remain unsolved. Still little is understood about the Northern Maritime Traditions’ mysterious appearance somewhere around 200-400 AD (Ipiutak culture) in northwest Alaska or around 500-750 AD (Old Bering Sea culture) along the northern Chukchi Sea and Bering Strait. [10] But the abundance of harpoon points indicate a shift to maritime hunting. There is nothing short of Bering Sea harpoon heads found in museum collections yet each of them is unique. This particular harpoon head, which is not as elaborate as those of the Old Bering Sea culture, appears to have a carved eyelid around the line hole with the head shaped like a bird with its bead slightly opened as to welcome an arrow point. On the top of the harpoon head are further carved lines.

Peter Loovers, February 2022

[1] Mason, Owen K. 2020b. Focusing on the Coast. In Arctic: culture and climate. Amber Lincoln, Jago Cooper, and Jan Peter Laurens Loovers (eds.). Pp. 187-196. London: Thames & Hudson in collaboration with The British Museum. p. 190-1

[2] See for illustration, Spencer, Robert F. 1984. North Alaska Coast Eskimo. In Arctic. David Damas (ed.). Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 5. Pp320-337. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. P. 326

[3] Collins, Henry Bascom Jnr. 1937. Archaeology of St. Lawrence Island, Alaska. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, 96(1). Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. p. 37

[4] Collins, Henry Bascom Jnr. 1941. Prehistoric Eskimo harpoon heads from Bering Strait. Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, 31(7): 318-324

[5] Morrison, David. 1991. The Diamond Jenness Collections from Bering Strait. Archaeological Survey of Canada Mercury Series Paper 144. Hull (Quebec): Canadian Museum of Civilization

[6] Mason, Owen K. 2009. “The Multiplication of Forms”: Bering Strait Harpoon Heads as a Demic and Macroevolutionary Procy. In Macroevolution in Human Prehistory: Evolutionary Theory and Processual Archaeology. Anne Marie Pentiss, Ian Kuijt, and James C. Chatters (eds.). Pp.73-107. New York: Springer. p. 89

[7] Morrison, David. 1991. The Diamond Jenness Collections from Bering Strait. Archaeological Survey of Canada Mercury Series Paper 144. Hull (Quebec): Canadian Museum of Civilization

[8] Lewis, Michael A. 1995. Technological Development and Culture Change on St. Lawrence Island: A Functional Typology of Toggle Harpoon Heads. PhD thesis. University of Alaska Fairbanks.

[9] Mason, Owen K. 2020a.Earliest Known People in the North American Arctic. In Arctic: culture and climate. Amber Lincoln, Jago Cooper, and Jan Peter Laurens Loovers (eds.). Pp.178-186. London: Thames & Hudson in collaboration with The British Museum. p. 185; also Mason, Owen K. 2020b. Focusing on the Coast. In Arctic: culture and climate. Amber Lincoln, Jago Cooper, and Jan Peter Laurens Loovers (eds.). Pp. 187-196. London: Thames & Hudson in collaboration with The British Museum.

[10] Mason, Owen K. 2020b. Focusing on the Coast. In Arctic: culture and climate. Amber Lincoln, Jago Cooper, and Jan Peter Laurens Loovers (eds.). Pp. 187-196. London: Thames & Hudson in collaboration with The British Museum. p. 190, 195