Prow Piece, From Kayak Bow
date: label: Accession Date
content: 20 Dec 1929
name: label: Collector
content: Dr. Henry B. Collins Jr.
label: Donor Name
content: Dr. Henry B. Collins Jr.
notes: label: Notes
content: From card: "Flat piece of wood, curved. (Cut 4, Sec. 2 (second 2 ft.), South Midden.)"
label: Notes
content: Illus. Fig. 15 p. 38 and Fig. 16E p. 39 in Anichtchenko, Evguenia. 2017. "Reconstructing The St. Lawrence Island Kayak; From Forgotten Watercraft to a Bering Sea Maritime Network." Alaska Journal of Anthropology. 15 (1&2) : 25-48. Identified there pp. 37-38: "A kayak prow piece from the Kialegak site (NMNH A347028) provides additional insights into the design and evolution of the St. Lawrence kayak. The object was unearthed by Henry Collins in 1929 from the south midden of this site at a depth between 0.6 and 1.2 m (2 and 4 feet) and was labeled in the NMNH collection's card catalog as "section of sled." The artifact measures 25 cm in length, 19 cm in height, and 1 cm in width, and features a sharply upturned tip at one end with a lashing hole and two joint scarphs at another (Fig. 15a). The object's shape, dimensions, and joint pattern, however, leave little doubt that this is a kayak bow piece. The ethnographic record provides two possible references for understanding how this frame fit into the stem assembly. It can represent either the bow of a Hooper Bay-style kayak with its characteristic large circular opening (Zimmerly 2000a:48, 2000b:xvii; Fig. 15b) or the Norton Sound variant with a smaller tear-drop-shaped handgrip (Golden 2015:220; Fig. 15c). None of the archaeological sites on St. Lawrence have yielded examples of a Hooper Bay-style top bow piece, making a Norton Sound-style bow variant more plausible, particularly in light of the abovementioned kayak photographs taken by Collins at Cape Kialegak in 1929. It is noteworthy that the Norton Sound kayak bow is technically bifurcated, although in a different manner than Aleutian skin boats. Norton Sound and, evidently, St. Lawrence Island are the northernmost extent of this constructional technique. The traces of such bifurcation can be seen in bow grip holes of Bering Strait and King Island kayaks, and are completely lacking north of Bering Strait. ... The Kialegak bow was sampled for 14C AMS dating (Table 2) [p. 37]. Two resulting date ranges, cal ad 1310 to 1360 (cal bp 640 to 590) and cal ad 1385 to 1425 (cal bp 565 to 525) (Beta 409143), suggest that the connection between St. Lawrence Island and Norton Sound kayak technology existed for over half a millennium. ..."
label: Record Last Modified
content: 30 Jul 2020
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Cape Kialegak / St. Lawrence Island, Bering Sea / St. Lawrence Quad, Alaska, United States, North America
topic: label: Topic
content: Archaeology
culture: label: Culture
content: Eskimo
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 104800
label: USNM Number
content: A347028-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Kayak Prow