The Sadiron Lamp of Kamchatka as a Clue to the Chronology of the Aleut

• Published in: American Antiquity
• Main Author: Quimby, George I.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 1946
• Subjects: Museology; Archeology; Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous); History; Bering Strait; Pacific; aleut; Kamchatka; Alaska; Aleutian Islands
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/275566; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0002731600029243

Recent studies of trait distributions by Collins, de Laguna, and Heizer, have, in my opinion, demonstrated a cultural connection between southern Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, Kamchatka, and Kurile Islands. These circum- North Pacific cultural connections seem to have been established after settlement of all the areas mentioned and therefore are not properly a part of the problem of man's first entry into America. Southern Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, Kamchatka, and the Kurile Islands form a zone or rim around the North Pacific shores of Asia and America. Along this rim of the North Pacific there seems to have been a drifting of traits and trait complexes, both from America to Asia and from Asia to America. And for the most part, the cultural connections of the circum-North Pacific zone seem to have been rather independent of the diffusions and cultural development of the Bering Strait region.