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Eskimo Jacket Ornaments of Ivory Suggesting Function of Bone Pendants Found in Beothuk Sites in Newfoundland345

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Frank G. Speck
Frank G. Speck*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Extract

The large number of carved bone ornaments found in sites of the extinct Beothuk of Newfoundland and illustrated in some abundance in Howley's monograph on this tribe, have been a source of speculation among American archaeologists r as to their associations with Eskimo or Indian art. Without knowing positively that these objects are pendant ornaments for the fur coats worn by this and other groups in the northeast there has been a tendency by inr ference to regard them as such. The fact that similarly appearing carved pendants of ivory are known from the Labrador Eskimo in general, and are also typical of coat decoration of the Baffinlanders, as well as other bands of Eskimo of the central group, puts the question to test, and points to the probability that the Beothuk objects served a similar purpose in clothing decoration.

Type
Facts and Comments
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , January 1940 , pp. 225 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1940

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Footnotes

345

Acknowledgment is made to the Faculty Research Fund, University of Pennsylvania (Grant No. 286) for support of the field work in 1936 in the Labrador Peninsula.

References

346 I devote some attention to this feature of art in clothing for the reason just given, and also since it is not given attention in Dr. Birket-Smith's summary of cultural elements of the Eskimo. (1929).

347 Birket-Smith, K., Ethnography of the Egedesminde District, Kopenhagen, 1924, p. 168 and The Caribou Eskimos, Material and Social Life and Their Cultural Position, Descriptive Part I, Copenhagen, 1929, p. 200 (Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition, 1921–4, Vol. 5).Google Scholar

348 Hawkes, E. W., The Labrador Eskimo, Memoir 91, No. 14 Anthropological Series, Geological Survey of Canada, 1916, p. 39.Google Scholar Hawkes mentions pewter ornaments made of melted spoons, worn around edge of flap of woman's “dickey” (jacket) among east coast people of Hudson Bay and Ungava, and fringe of ivory ornaments on “old-time dickeys of the men (which) had a fringe of ivory ornaments around the bottom; these were made of walrus teeth.”

349 Turner, L. M., Ethnology of the Ungava District, Hudson Bay Territory, Eleventh Annual Report Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, D. C, 1889–90, p. 210.Google Scholar Turner gives no description or figure. He notes that deerskin fringe or “little pendants of ivory” form trimmings on the edge of sealskin coats.

350 Boas, F., The Central Eskimo, Sixth Annual Report Bureau American Ethnology, Washington, D. C, 1884–5, p. 556, Fig. 509, a, b, c.Google Scholar His reference is short, stating that the woman's jacket is “frequently adorned with ivory or brass beads running around the edge.”

351 Boas, F., The Eskimo of Baffin Land and Hudson Bay, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, N. Y., Vol. XV, 1901, Fig. 75 and p. 55.Google Scholar Illustrations of ivory or bone beads for woman's jacket.

352 Mathiassen, T., Archaeology of the Central Eskimos, Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition, 1921–4, Vol. IV, part 1, Descriptive part, Copenhagen, 1927, PI. 30, and p. 72.Google Scholar Illustrations of walrus molar ivory drop-pendants of uncertain use as trimmings on clothing or ear-ornaments.