The data for this paper are taken from a larger manuscript study (Dyson, ms.) aimed at the collation of the specific evidence available at the present time on the first occurrences of the major traits of material culture in each sub-area of the Near East for the period from 5000 to 2500 B.C. Such a survey has not previously existed and it provides a solid reference work for checking on the exact locations of key items in the fields of agriculture, husbandry, textiles, metallurgy, transportation, and so on.

In making a survey of this nature the problem of chronology is paramount, for it is upon this basis that priority in discovery must be accredited to any one area, and that directions of diffusion must be determined. In this region, as in other parts of the world, the correlation of cultural events with Christian chronology has yet to be satisfactorily completed. We cannot, therefore, deal with any degree of accuracy in terms of particular years. The presence of stratigraphic deposits, however, does allow us to deal with periods of relative cultural time.

Until quite recently the cultural prehistory of Japan has been, like many other areas of Asia, very inadequately known to most American and European students. There is now enough material available to enable me to present to you an outline of the prehistoric cultural development of Japan with a high degree of reliability in its essential validity. Much remains to be done, however, both in the sphere of “dirt archaeology” and in the field of analysis, synthesis, and foreign relationships.

The term “Jomon” has become entrenched as the designation for the entire period of Japanese culture preceding the entrance of the Yayoi people with their bronze-age culture from Korea and the adjacent areas into Kyushu. This migration must have commenced at least as early as the second century B.C. since it is known that Yayoi centers were flourishing in Kyushu and southwest Honshu in the first century B.C. Absolute dates for the earliest cultural manifestations in Japan are lacking but my guess would be about 3000 B.C.

Since 1944, the writer has given some thought to the problems of marking out the culture areas of Asia, although there has not been opportunity for anything like a comprehensive trait distribution study of the continent (Bacon & Hudson, 1945; Bacon, 1946). This paper, then, must be regarded only as a tentative second step in formulating some of the problems involved, and in mapping the culture areas of the continent (cf. Naroll, 1950, for mapping of Bacon, 1946).

Sapir defined culture areas as “groups of geographically contiguous tribes that exhibit so many cultural traits in common as to contrast with other such groups” (1949, p. 425). Although in Asia we are frequently dealing with nations rather than with tribes, Sapir's definition appears for the most part to be as acceptable for Asia as Wissler and Kroeber found it for North America and Herskovits for Africa.

Considering the amount of attention that has been given to pastoral nomadism in studies of Asiatic cultures and their histories, one would expect that students of this subject would have reached agreement on the fundamentals. But on the contrary, expert views show a surprising amount of difference on important points. Discussions of pastoral nomadism often fail to coincide as to the nature of pastoral nomadism (i.e., what features are basic and essential), as-to its relationship with other types of culture, and as to its antiquity. These problems are increasingly acute when dealing with the question of whether or not a pastoral nomad culture area exists or has ever existed. Recent considerations of the subject include Bacon (1946, p. 123), Kroeber (1947, pp. 323-4), and Naroll (1950, p. 184). Kroeber raises the question of the validity of pastoral nomadism as a complete culture; Naroll side-steps the problem by referring to a “Steppe Area.”

The Geographical situation and ecological character of the Aleutian Islands are of such nature as to give the archaeological record there special significance with regard to certain problems of Eskimo prehistory. From the point of origin, Unimak Island, the islands extend to the west in a thousand mile long chain which is essentially a broken extension of the Alaska Peninsula. Water gaps are relatively short in the eastern section, although the inter-island passes are often perilous because of currents and tide rips, not to speak of frequent fogs and strong winds. In the west the water gaps tend to become longer, culminating in the 40 miles or more of stormy open water involved in the passage from the Rat Islands to the Near Islands. Between the westernmost of the Aleutians, Attu Island, and the Russian Commander Islands is a still more formidable gap of about 250 statute miles, and 138 statute miles intervene between the Commander Islands and the coast of Kamchatka. Since there is no reason to think that these geographical conditions were significantly different in the appreciably recent past, the inference clearly seems to be that the Aleutian Islands were peopled from the Alaska Peninsula by competent boatmen.

The Dorset culture was first recognized and described by Jenness (1925), on the basis of materials in the National Museum of Canada that had been excavated by Eskimos at Cape Dorset on Hudson Strait and on Coats Island in Hudson Bay. Since then Dorset material has been found at many sites in the eastern Arctic from Newfoundland in the south, along the coasts of Labrador and the northern Canadian islands to Inglefield Land in Northwest Greenland. Though some of the Dorset sites have been excavated carefully and systematically, there are many points about the culture that remain obscure. It is somewhat exasperating to realize that we actually know little more about the Dorset culture than we did when Jenness first described it 26 years ago.

While recent excavations in Canada or Greenland have not added significantly to our knowledge of the origin of the Dorset culture or the role it played in the eastern Arctic, some of the earlier evidence, if reexamined and reappraised, is seen to have important implications in connection with recent discoveries in Alaska.

This Brief Paper will serve as an introduction to an examination of the ceramic material excavated by Giddings at the site of Iyatayet on Cape Denbigh in Norton Sound in northwestern Alaska. Norton Sound is located in the northeastern Bering Sea. The site has become well known because of the Cape Denbigh flint complex which occurred in the lowest level of the site and which was separated from the pottery levels above by a sterile zone of varying thickness, from 2 to 18 inches, made up of laminated, sandy clay (Giddings, 1949, 1951). This sterile zone was contorted and has been tentatively interpreted as indicating a colder climate than the present.

The upper sections of the excavated area at Iyatayet give every indication of having been intermittently occupied from relatively recent times back through Eskimo history to approximately 2000 years ago. The top layers of the site contain the same artifacts and ceramic materials as those found on the neighboring Nukleet site which is thought to date roughly around 1500 to 1600 A.D. Other materials from the upper zone are suggestive of Early Punuk.

Inland Alaska is undoubtedly one of the most discouraging areas for archaeological research in North America. But the fascinating theory of human migrations via Bering Strait has led several of us to search this critical territory of boreal forest and tundra for material evidence of the theory. Sites and collections of implements discovered so far are ridiculously small and scattered considering the size of the territory, yet as a while they may be significant.” I shall present here my own conclusions on the present significance of these materials—conclusions which reflect discussions with Giddings and Larsen but which do not convict them.

Reviewing what has been done in this field during the post-war years I cannot escape the conclusion that there is as yet no evidence whatever for the hypothetic migrations of men from Asia via the Bering Strait region during the Neolithic period, that is in the European sense of the term.

Ethnographers confidently point to the Tlingit-speaking population of southeastern Alaska as an important component of the Northwest Coast culture area. They cite these Indians as a maritime oriented group, sharing a common speech and many distinctive culture traits. About fourteen Tlingit tribes have been listed and in part described for the Alaska coast.

I should like to discuss three less well-known Tlingit-speaking bands now located in the interior of northern British Columbia and of southern Yukon Territory. These three neighboring groups are: the Tagish band of Carcross at the junction of lakes Bennett and Nares; the Atlin band on the lake of the same name; and the Teslin band with headquarters on Teslin Lake. This is the farthest inland of the lakes mentioned, and it is little more than a hundred miles from the mild, damp Pacific coast with its abundant sea and shore life.

In 1949, I undertook an archaeological and ethnological survey of northern Tlingit territory in Alaska. Whereas a good deal was known about Tlingit ethnology, the archaeology of these people was virtually unexplored. Although the northern Tlingit have a culture which is in many respects less rich than that of their southern neighbors, they were presumably middlemen in passing on to the latter those cultural influences which eminated from the Asiatic North Pacific. Also in northern Tlingit territory we ought to find an archaeological horizon or horizons characterized by those traits which link the ancient cultures of the Aleut and Pacific Eskimo area and the Coast Salish area.

The tribal territories of the Yakutat on the Gulf of Alaska and of the Angoon or Hootznuwu on Admiralty Island near the center of the southeastern Alaskan archipelago were found to be the most promising for a study of Tlingit culture history, and accordingly in 1950 a whole season was spent at Angoon.

Moieties and/or SIBS occur in all the major culture areas of North and South America with the exception of Eskimo and Patagonia. In North America they are also lacking on the Pacific Coast from Vancouver Island to California and in all but the northern part of the Plateau. Data are incomplete for much of Argentina and Brazil and for parts of Meso-America.

Many Siberian nomads are organized into patrilineal sibs or into extended families stressing the male line. The Koryak, Kamchadal and Chukchi are sibless, forming a continuous bilateral area with the Aleut and Eskimo on both sides of Bering Sea. Moieties and sibs are not characteristic of China, Japan, and Mongolia, but there is consistent stressing of the paternal line, whatever the kinship system. Patri-sibs occur in Manchuria.

The Value of plant evidence has been pointed out. Man does not invent plants. The identical plant in cultivation in pre-Columbian times in the Old World and the New World virtually proves that voyages were made between these two cultural worlds. “Virtually proves” because the domestic plants in question have at best only remote possibilities of being carried to or from America by natural means and even less possibility of parallel evolution to botanical identity.

To establish a case only two things must be done. First, the pre-Columbian presence in both the Old and the New World of a given plant must be established. Second, the question of its possible natural dispersal must be examined. The homeland of the plant in question need not be determined, for our interest is only in its transfer. When the identical plant occurs in both hemispheres in pre-Columbian times and when natural means of dispersal are improbable, human carriage is the only probable alternative.

There is a Growing trend, I believe, for American archaeologists to look beyond the limits of their specialized and local areas of research and to take more interest in some of the basic problems of culture history — of the processes of origin and growth of cultures and civilizations. The Americanist looks at these problems in terms of the American Indian cultures, but in doing so, to be logically consistent, he must make some judgment on the old question as to whether or not influences from the civilizations of Asia had anything to do with the growth of those in America.

This problem, or what turns out to be a great series of problems when one looks into it at all, is of great practical and theoretical interest, and will, I am convinced, receive much attention in future years. Such attention is somewhat slow in coming, however, because of the uncompromisingly isolationist point of view held up to now by most Americanists and reflected in the almost complete lack of research on the problems of Asiatic-American cultural relationships.