Paleoeskimo artifacts from the Pond Inlet region have been known since Mathiassen carried out archaeological excavations in 1923, although for some time they were not recognized as such by their discoverer. A short description of the main sites known at the present time and of the most characteristic artifacts will be given here. Some conclusions will then be drawn concerning the local aspects of the Pre-Dorset and Dorset cultures, and their implications.

By a strange coincidence, the oldest dated remains of the whole region come from a point only 6 m distant from the Thule house excavated by Mathiassen at Mittimatalik (in which he found a few Dorset and perhaps Pre-Dorset artifacts) (Fig. 1). The site is situated on the west bank of a stream, in the middle of the present village of Pond Inlet, and is now covered in part by new houses and roads. In 1969, a pre-Dorset layer was found at 8 m above sea level, under modern, Thule, and Dorset remains. Underlaid by gravel and sand, it does not seem to have been too much disturbed by solifluxion, but the stratigraphy is confused by numerous crevices cutting through the sod and peat. Besides a few flint artifacts, mostly burins and burin spalls, a complete barbed harpoon head and a similar one with the point cut off were found. Seal bones from the same layer have provided a date of 4385±155 radiocarbon years (S-589), or 2435 B.C. (adjusted date: 2035 B.C.). Local conditions have made it impossible to carry out investigation of the site during the last four years.

The Study of Infectious Disease in human populations has traditionally focused on the biological factors of virulence of the pathogen and the immunity of the host. Since this type of research has been stimulated by the need for the development of treatments for specific diseases, it is not difficult to understand this orientation. The definition of symptoms, differential diagnosis and the isolation of the pathogen are essential elements in the eventual treatment of a disease. The clinical approach to the study of disease was necessarily particularistic. Although population parameters were considered in evaluating the incidence of a disease, the social and cultural factors were seldom dealt with fully. Alland's (1970) study is one of the best attempts to examine the interaction of disease and population in the perspective of adaptation.

In this paper, we will review studies which demonstrate the importance of culture in the transmission of infectious diseases, and from this perspective, we will attempt to develop an evolutionary framework for studying disease in human populations. Specifically, we will examine the effect of infectious diseases in small populations and propose models which will allow the measurement of these effects.

Throughout the geographic and temporal range of dorset there is little yet documented to indicate major cultural changes. The Pre-Dorset part of the Paleoeskimo continuum is better known by its lithic artifacts, and to date too few sites have produced non-lithic ones to afford a clear picture of technological development. On the other hand, there is enough available information on the two periods to indicate that some non-lithic artifacts reflect a regularity in the shifting styles of discrete attributes over those thirty-five hundred years involved. Such minor style shifts do not readily appear functional in the sense of producing a more efficiently adaptive weapon, and some seem to entail more manufacturing energy coupled to greater risk of breakage without apparent gain in efficiency. Regardless of the reasons for these changes in style, they appear to occur simultaneously over relatively broad areas and appear to indicate an intensity of information exchange and cultural conformity within such areas. This is most notable within what has been called the core area (see Introduction): a region including North Baffin and Bylot Islands, the Fury and Hecla Straits, Southampton, Coats, and Mansel Islands, both shores of Hudson Strait, and southern Baffin Island at least as far north as Cumberland Sound. As McGhee (this volume) has suggested, there are periods in which this stylistic homogeneity extended into the High Arctic, and different periods in which the Central Arctic as far west as Victoria Island (but not the High Arctic) participated in many of these discrete style shifts.

Birdsell (1968:231) summarizes qualitative predictions for the dynamics of Pleistocene hunter-gatherer populations. He concludes that population density should respond rapidly to changes in biotic and climatic parameters; that “populations would tend to overshoot carrying capacity as they restore their numbers from a depressed condition,” and that so long as unoccupied areas existed, population density would be regulated at a level well below carrying capacity (see also Binford 1968). We believe that these conclusions can be strengthened and quantified by formal mathematical analysis of reasonable demographic models. The results of this analysis have several important implications for archaeological theory and methodology.

Formal models of population dynamics usually lead to predictions of population behavior over time intervals on the order of the generation time of the organism or longer. Since our direct knowledge of population history of regions is usually in proportion to the amount of recent disruption, archaeology can test and exploit theory in a manner denied ethnology.

Nine profiles of prehistoric cultural deposits at Wetherill Mesa, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, were analyzed for fossil pollen content. Relatively large numbers of corn (Zea) pollen occur in certain deposits of Mug House. In the alluvium retained behind low walls of two check-dams, the frequency of Zea is relatively low (.07%) but approximates the frequency of Zea pollen in soil of a garden on Chapin Mesa planted in Indian corn since 1919. Evidently, soil behind the prehistoric checkdams served as corn plots. The abundance of pollen resembling bee-weed (Cleome serrulata) suggests a more important role for the caper family in prehistoric time than would be inferred from its macrofossil record alone. The Cieome-type is common in prehistoric refuse and in human coprolite in the Four Corners area.

Pollen content of matrix within a single archaeological site may vary, depending on the nature of the deposit. Although parts of their deposits overlap in time, the pollen content of (1) a trash slope, (2) a kiva, and (3) a work area within Mug House pueblo varies greatly, especially in economic pollen. Variation between profiles is reduced considerably when they are taken from the same type of deposit, that is, adjacent kivas or trash profiles.

The hope that the fossil record would shed new light on the cause of abandonment of Mesa Verde was largely unrealized. The main stratigraphic event in the pollen sequence of the last 1000 years is a relative increase in juniper and pine pollen following abandonment 700 years ago. Ecologically, this rise can be explained as the result of secondary plant succession with first juniper and then pinyon invading fields when human disturbance ended. It may or may not reflect climatic change.

Sampling for insect remains was conducted at ruins under excavation at Wetherill Mesa during 1961 and 1962. The mesa-top samples were unproductive; the more-protected cliff dwellings offered better results. The fragile nature of insect remains requires special procedures in their separation and preservation from the samples of soil, adobe, mortar, fecal matter, and other material collected for study. Insect species were found that could have been pests in stored grain as well as in the farmlands. Other insects, chiefly beetles, were recovered that might be classified as household pests. Scavenger insects, mainly tenebrionids, scarab beetles, and flies, were associated with turkey roosts, pack-rat nests, fecal matter, and burials. Twenty-four specimens of human feces were studied; only one sample contained insect remains (grasshopper parts) that could have been ingested. Insect activity on timbers was observed. It is possible that the Indians felled trees and permitted bark beetles and borers to “work” on the trees, thus loosening the bark for easier stripping. Although this study was not as comprehensive as might have been hoped for, results indicate that entomological study should certainly be useful in archaeological investigations.

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.

The present title suggests the emphasis of this paper, not its total content. Essentially, this is an advance report on the 1952-53 Columbia University archaeological expedition in the river valleys of the lea and Rio Grande de Nazca in south coastal Peru. The scope of this work was both intensive and extensive and the materials to be studied so numerous and varied that final publication will take time. For this reason it seems well to first present a brief, but carefully considered, outline of our major findings. Even this has had to wait until painstaking analyses had been made in the laboratory.

Most corn from the Mesa Verde area belongs to a complex derived from hybridization of a small-cobbed flint-pop corn with an 8-rowed flour corn. This cross produced 12- to 14-rowed flint and flour corn (the typical Basketmaker corn) and the variable Pima-Papago corn. After Pueblo I, probably late Pueblo II, there was an increase in the number of 8-rowed cobs and a decrease in 12- to 14-rowed cobs. The corn is similar to collections from sites of comparable age excavated in northern Arizona near Navajo Mountain. The uniformity and the slow development of corn types probably reflect peripheral conditions, especially adaptation to short growing seasons and limited cultural interchange.

Practically all of the squash was Cucurbita pepo, the species which spread over all agricultural areas of the United States. There were a few specimens of Cucurbita mixta and of the bottle gourd, Lagenaria siceraria. Some rinds of the two species of Cucurbita gave evidence of their use for scrapers and containers, uses to which the bottle gourd is put almost exclusively in sites to the south. The rarity of the bottle gourd and the absence of seeds and plant parts of cotton suggest that these plants were rarely, if ever, grown in the region.

Not much work has been done on identification of feather fragments because of a deficiency in methods and a lack of trained persons. One individual, trained in these techniques, was tested intensively to determine the accuracy of his identifications. Besides identifying archaeological feather fragments, he also identified small fragments from artifacts (such as cotton socks), which is one example of the usefulness of this technique.

In this Essay, I will focus on inferences about the size of prehistoric populations based on estimates of the quantity of space utilized by those populations. I wish to recognize at the outset that there are many other data bases that have been employed by archaeologists in making inferences about prehistoric demography. While I do not intend to question the validity of alternative data bases for making paleo-demographic inferences, there are reasons why I believe that utilized space is potentially our most significant data base. Let us consider some of the alternatives.

(1) Simulation models. Simulation models are powerful tools for gaining insight into the demography of prehistoric populations. Yet, if the implications of such models are to be tested, a means of making direct inferences about the population of prehistoric groups is needed.

(2) Burial populations. Burial populations are likely to remain the data base from which the most comprehensive demographic inferences can be made. However, there are many areas of the world in which burial populations are so rare that one cannot count on using this data base. In addition, Cook (1972) and Baker and Sanders (1973) have identified a number of significant limitations on the utility of burial data.

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.

This paper limits itself to a description of four complexes revealed by our excavations at Saglek Bay, northern Labrador, during the years 1969, 1970, and 1971. A “Pre-Dorset” complex and three phases of a considerably longer Dorset Eskimo occupation are examined and some comparison within the Saglek sequence and a few comparisons with nearby geographic areas are offered. No attempt is made to generalize about Paleoeskimo cultures in the entire Canadian Arctic, especially as regards causative relationships, since such attempts seem premature given our present lack of control over basic cultural and environmental data.

Over two dozen Paleoeskimo components were excavated or surface-collected during our three years at Saglek Bay. Analysis is now nearly complete and four representative components from these sites have been selected to illustrate four more or less distinct cultures or culture phases in this little known region of eastern Canada.

As sites were discovered at Saglek Bay they were given consecutive letter designations. The three sites considered herein are Upernavik Island Site K, a Pre-Dorset station, Rose Island Site E, which contained early and middle Dorset components, and Rose Island Site W, a late Dorset station. Each site location, the artifacts found therein, and evidence for chronology are summarized briefly below.

The petrology and stratification of the late Pleistocene and Recent mesa deposits in the Mesa Verde area are described. These deposits are believed to have been formed by eolian deposition. Measurements of present-day dust accumulation are reported. The age relationships of the strata are discussed on the basis of measurements of the radioactivity of organic carbon and carbonate precipitates and with reference to the early Mesa Verde culture.

The results of carbon 14 tests on materials falling within the early man category are in some respects as surprising as a few of those in other fields, but on the whole they are reasonably satisfactory. Because of the regional distribution of the samples and the number of people who sent them in, several nominally belonging in this group are discussed elsewhere. The latter include Gypsum cave, Leonard rockshelter, the early horizons in California and Oregon and the material from South America.

The age of the well-known Folsom complex caused considerable comment when the figure pertaining to the type site was released. The average of 4283 ± 250 years obtained from sample 377 was entirely too low in the opinion of many archaeologists and geologists and was completely out of line with dates for other materials known to be later stratigraphically. Because of this, Harold J. Cook, who provided the charcoal used in the test, returned to and carefully reexamined the Folsom quarry in 1950.