archeology of st. lawrence island, alaskaby henry b. collins,

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Archeology of St. Lawrence Island, Alaska by Henry B. Collins, Review by: M. F. Ashley-Montagu Isis, Vol. 28, No. 2 (May, 1938), pp. 534-536 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/225730 . Accessed: 09/05/2014 11:07 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . The University of Chicago Press and The History of Science Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Isis. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 62.122.76.26 on Fri, 9 May 2014 11:07:01 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Archeology of St. Lawrence Island, Alaska by Henry B. Collins,Review by: M. F. Ashley-MontaguIsis, Vol. 28, No. 2 (May, 1938), pp. 534-536Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/225730 .

Accessed: 09/05/2014 11:07

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The University of Chicago Press and The History of Science Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to Isis.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.26 on Fri, 9 May 2014 11:07:01 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

534 ISIS, XXVIII, 2

more than probable patterns of statistical scores, then the omission of undisclosed symbols from the packs would hardly provide the necessary conditions for such a test.

The reviewer is well avare of the inadequacy of the present review of Professor RHINE'S very interesting book; he offers no apologies. A proper examination of Professor RHINE'S work would demand con- siderably more space than we can give it here. But it does seem clear to us that a vast number of factors were involved in Professor RHINE'S

experiments which have been given no consideration by him at all. It. is in the proper analysis of these factors that we would suggest that at least part of the answer to Professor RHINE'S question lies. The personality of the subject, his habitual modes of thought, his individual history, his health at the time of the experiment, the light in the room, the air, the immediate environment, the interest of the subject, and numerous similar factors. These were all conditions of the experiments. Were any of these necessary conditions? The combination of which of them, if any, was sufficient to give the significant results obtained by Professor RHINE? Or were there factors involved outside and beyond these? Professor RHINE has obtained an apparent effect, but an effect of what, extra-sensory or sensory perception? The latter seems vastly. more likely than the former.

New York University. M. F. ASHLEY-MONTAGU.

Henry B. Collins, Jr.-Archeology of St. Lawrence Island, Alaska. xi + 431 pag., 84 Plates, 26 Figures. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, vol. 96, No. i, Publication 341I, Washington, Smith- sonian Institution, 1937.

The problem of the Eskimo and his culture and the problem of the peopling of America are closely connected ones. The most generally accepted theory of the present day is that North America drew its first inhabitants from Asia by way of Siberia across Bering Strait, possibly when north-eastern Siberia was connected by a land bridge with the Alaskan mainland. Bering Strait is to-day quite a shallow channel, and when the Strait freezes over it is possible to travel across the ice, and by the aid of floes, from the Russian to the American side and back again. On a clear day the coast of the opposite side can be made out with the naked eye. The distance from the Siberian to the Alaskan coast is some 6o miles. The physical and cultural affinities between the Siberian and the Alaskan are so great, and these are of such a kind, that there can be no doubt of the origin of the Alaskan Eskimos, and ultimatelv, as we pass southwards, of the American Indian. The " no doubt" is merely a matter of a high degree of probability, but not of

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REVIEWS 535

certainty. The possibility of Melano-Austral immigrations from the Pacific has hardly yet received the serious consideration which it deserves.

Mr. COLLINS does not discuss these matters, but takes them for granted. In the present work he is actually concerned with the problem of the Eskimos and of Eskimo culture, his volume representing a contribution towards the clarification of these problems. The volume opens with an historical introduction relating to the origin of the Eskimo and his culture, followed by a detailed account of the archaeological findings on St. Lawrence Island, the fruits of investigations carried out there, and also at Punuk, by the author and his assistants during the summers of 1928, 1929, and 1930. St. Lawrence Island, which is the largest island in the Bering Sea (about ioo miles in length), lies 150 miles below Bering Strait, Ioo miles from the mainland of Alaska, and 40 miles from Siberia. In view of its position it had been reasonable to suppose that the archaeology of this island might throw some light upon the problem of the Eskimo and Asian-American relations. Mr. COLLINS, in the present publication, shows that such a supposition is supported by the archaeological findings. The latter are for the most part illustrated in 84 plates and a number of text figures, and are admirably described in the text. The material discovered and studied by Mr. COLLINS is not of a nature which permits him to solve any of the great problems, but it does enable him to clarify a good many points. It is quite clear from his findings that the origins of Old Bering Sea culture as repre- sented on St. Lawrence Island are to be sought in the cultures of north-eastern Siberia.

The so-called resemblances between Old Bering Sea art and Melanesian art to which JENNESS has called attention are here disposed of by Mr. COLLINS as being due to convergence. This is, of course, a possible explanation, but until much more of the evidence is in it were better to suspend judgment and to bear the possibility of such a relationship in mind, however unlikely it may at the present time appear.

The resemblances which Mr. COLLINS sees between certain aspects of Old Bering Sea art and the early Chinese art of the Shang (yin) and Chou dynasties (1766-255 B.C.), chiefly the elliptical elevated " eye," which occurs on the Northwest Coast also, suggest to him a related origin. In the spurred line and alternating spur motives of Old Bering Sea art Mr. COLLINS sees a remote indirect relationship with some of the painted pottery of the Neolithic Yang Shao culture of northern and western China.

Mr. COLLINS' admirable volume, which was recently (I936) awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Academy of Science and Letters of Denmark,

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536 isis, XXVIII, 2

will give an added impetus to the investigation of a profoundly important subject. There is a good bibliography and an index.

New York University. M. F. ASHLEY-MONTAGU.

E. E. Evans-Pritchard. - Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande. With a Foreword by C. G. SELIGMAN. Xxvi + 554 pag. New York: Oford University Press, 1937, ($ 7.50)

This is the best and most exhaustive account of witchcraft, oracles, and magic, as each of these qualities and practises function among a primitive people, that has thus far appeared in a field where there are many admirable studies on the same subjects. We may echo the opening words of Professor SELIGMAN's Foreword, "Dr. EVANS-PRITCHARD

has given us good measure, pressed down and running over." The Azande, among whom the author during several expeditions

spent a total of twenty months, are a negroid people living in the Southern Sudan on the Nile-Congo divide. Since 1905 they have been subject to Anglo-Egyptian rule and now live under the Sudan Administration. These relations between the Government and the Azande have proved of great advantage to the author, and he has made the most of them. Throughout the work Dr. EvANs-PRITCHARD keeps completely to the report and explanation of the observations which he made among the Azande, and never for a moment does he enter into theoretical discussions of his data, or bring in examples from other cultures to assist the inter- pretation of his own observations among the Azande. The result is a repository of facts of the greatest interest and of abiding value to the student of human thought, whether primitive or otherwise.

The present volume is strictly limited to the presentation of the ma- terial relating to the subjects designated on its title-page; in further volumes Dr. EVANS-PRITCHARD promises to give us a complete account of Zande culture. In the present volume he provides the reader with a brief outline of Zande culture which is really quite adequate for an understanding of what follows. It is impossible to conceive of any future general discussion of witchcraft, magic, and oracles which will not be obliged to draw heavily upon Dr. EvANS-PRITCHARD's book. The book is very attractively written, and not alone the anthropologist, but anyone desirous of gaining some insight into the actual operation of human thought will benefit greatly from a reading of this excellent volume.

New York University. M. F. ASHLEY-MONTAGU

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