William S. Laughlin

The Settlement of the Americas: A Comparison of the Linguistic, Dental, and Genetic Evidence [and Comments and Reply]

The classification of the indigenous languages of the Americas by Greenberg distinguishes three stocks, Amerind, Na-Dene, and Aleut-Eskimo. The first of these covers almost all of the New World. The second consists of Na-Dene as defined by Sapir and, outside of recent. Athapaskan extensions in California and the American Southwest, is found in southern Alaska and northwestern Canada. The third, Aleut-Eskimo, is the easternmost branch of the Eurasiatic language family located in northern Asia and Europe. These three linguistic stocks are found to agree well with the three dental groups proposed by Turner and the genetic divisions of the New World population advanced by Zegura. The three groups are hypothesized as representing the settlement of the New World by successive migrations from Asia. The earliest is in all probability the Amerind; the relative priority of Na-Dene to Aleut-Eskimo is less certain. The evidence regarding the absolute chronology of these proposed migrations is discussed.

Comparison of bone apatite in osteoporotic and normal Eskimos

SummaryAn infrared and x-ray diffraction study of osteoporotic and normal, archaeological Eskimo bones. Osteoporotic bone apatite is greater in crystal size and/or perfection and lower in CO3 than normal bone apatite.

Human Anatomical Knowledge among the Aleutian Islanders

N THE COURSE of anthropological investigations2 of the Aleuts of the islands in Alaska our attention was in various ways drawn to their knowledge of human anatomy. We noticed this repeatedly in conversation. In linguistic study we encountered frequent anatomical terms applied to parts of the kayak and throwing-board and elsewhere. And in reviewing the literature our own field observations were corroborated in remarks by earlier observers such as Liitke and Veniaminov quoted below. These indications of an especially extensive knowledge of human anatomy on the part of the Aleuts led us to devote special field studies to this subject. In 1949 in the United States Marine Hospital in Seattle we recorded 234 anatomical terms from an Attu informant, Mike Lokanin, then aged 37, whose dialect, however, is not pure Western Aleut. The same year at Atka village in the central Aleutians we obtained some eighty odd terms from two old men, William Dirks Sr (age 67) and Sergius Golley (age 55). And in the Eastern or Fox Islands dialect, armed with an atlas of human anatomy plus human skeletons and the carcasses of seals butchered in our presence, we assembled from two old men, Afinogen Ermeloff (age 59) and Sergie Sovoroff (age 46), and from two old women, Eva Chercasen (age 59) and Virginia Krukoff (age 49), at Nikolski village, Umnak Island, about 380 Aleut anatomical terms. In 1952 about 100 terms were given to us by the second chief, Luke Shelikoff, of Akutan village, 200 miles east of Nikolski. In the present account only the Umnak material will be presented. References throughout this paper, therefore, to the Aleut language signify only the eastern dialect.

Anthropology in the Arctic: A Critique of Racial Typology and Normative Theory [and Comments and Reply]

The study of prehistory in the North American Arctic suffers from epistemological problems that have been resolved by scholars in other areas. The predominance of normative theory and racial typology as the foundations of Arctic anthropology has confined research in large part to the pursuit of racial and cultural histories and seriously inhibited the generation of hypotheses that address questions of process in either cultural or biological adaptation. This paper aims to elucidate the constraints on anthropological archaeology in Arctic research and to draw attention to more productive approaches in biological anthropology, archaeology, and ethnology.

Genetic and Environmental Factors in the Etiology of Dental Disease in the Aleut

FIG 1.-Map of the Aleutian Islands showing the major Aleut villages. Akutan, Nikolski, (1957) and later Poole3 et al. (1973), demonstrated similar effects in the Aleut, but what was significant here was that the number of carious teeth in the Aleut population was substantially higher than that of the Eskimo, despite a similar period of Western contact. The usual explanation offered by several authors for the universal increase in dental disease in more Westernized Eskimos

The Archeology of Cape Denbigh, by J.L. Giddings

Auroral observers complete work Mr. Alan Goodman, who was the Arctic Institute auroral observer at Eights Station, Antarctica, during the 1963 austral winter, has completed a study on photometric data obtained at Eights Station and its conjugate point station at Baie St. Paul, Province of Quebec. Both stations were equipped with National Bureau of Standards airglow photometers, operating with several optical filters. The study was carried out under a National Science Foundation grant at he Washington Office of the Arctic Institute. Mr. Goodman has now left the Institute and has entered graduate school in physics at Dartmouth College.