Anthropologists Find Alaskan Tools, Habits, Homes; No Original Alaskan

Four-Harvard anthropologists unearthed homes, spears, utenzils, and a thousand other relics in Alaska last summer, but they failed to find the bones of the original American, the CRIMSON learned last week.

The team, led by Wilbert K. Carter, teaching fellow in Anthropology, was sent by the Peabody Museum and sponsored by the Office of Naval Research. The group spent two months at Point Barrow the northernmost tip of Alaska on the Arctic Ocean; excavations can be made only during the summer months in this region, since the ground is too hard for careful digging at any other time.

The primary purpose of the expedition was to investigate the habits, tools, and technology of old Eskimo tribes. A secondary purpose, one which, according to Carter, "is present on all such surveys," was to find the bones of the original American.

Authorities believe that the forerunners of the American Indian came to this continent from Siberia by a passage across the Bering Sea. In 1948, a Peabody Museum expedition discovered that no migrations had taken place across the Aleutian Islands passageway.

Although the group failed to determine whether any such passages had been made at the northern wastes, they did carry out their original purpose with great success. Excavation revealed the remains of an Eskimo tribe that had lived on the Point around 800 A.D.

Carter called the site of the diggings "a rather gruesome one." Over 175 homesites were located, in addition to 1,119 artifacts--clothing, spears, meat bones, cooking utensils, skeletons--all of them preserved by ice.