The bank of the flat rises at present only about 4 feet above the beach of the river, but the flat behind is higher. The bank itself contains many specimens showing human workmanship, consisting of objects of stone, birch bark, bone, and rarely also of ivory, besides many fragments of pottery, many bones of wild Alaskan animals, and here and there a human skeleton. Some of these objects are low down in the bank. All the bones from the bank, including the human, and even the rare points of ivory, are semifossilized; the stone industry is peculiar; and the human remains differ plainly from both those of the later Yukon Indian and from those of the Eskimo. They are apparently Indian (see section on physical characteristics), but a tall Indian of a type that now is only met with much farther south.
Figure 11.—From above Kobolunuk to mouth of river
The stone industry from the bank appeared at first sight so primitive that even the term "paleolithic" would not fit and the only term that seemed to meet the situation was "protolithic." It consists predominantly of scrapers and knockers, with here and there a tool sharpened for cutting. The scrapers look especially crude. They consist simply of pieces of smaller or larger andesite-like volcanic slabs broken to the desired size and chipped more or less roughly along what was to be the scraping edge. A closer examination of the stones, which were obtained from a base of a cliff farther down the river, showed, however, that they were of material which is hard to work, and that the chipping, under the circumstances, was not really bad. (Pls. 11, 12.) Pottery must have been fairly plentiful and quite up to the average of the river, both in make and decoration.
Two fine long, partly fossilized ivory points picked up formerly on the site were obtained from Mr. Lawrence. They are handsomely barbed on one side and show a high grade of skill. They must have come from the Bering Sea and may belong to the old fine ivory culture of the western part of that region, of which more later.
There are also some fairly ancient sites farther down the river (see Narrative), but just what they are and how old remains to be determined.
A report on the archeological remains from the bank of Bonasila by Mr. H. W. Krieger, one of the curators of the Department of Anthropology, United States National Museum, follows: