Ipiutak

The oldest object here, from the Seward Peninsula in Alaska, is a tiny Ipiutak polar bear effigy in carved ivory, dated around A.D. 100-600.

There he found more than 50 characteristic Ipiutak sites: shallow depressions where the earth-covered wooden dugouts had collapsed into the ground.

But the Ipiutak people, Larsen thinks, were a notable exception.

Among the remarkable objects found in Ipiutak ruins are chains and swivels cut laboriously out of walrus ivory.

It lies at Ipiutak on Point Hope, a bleak sandspit in the Arctic Ocean, where no trees and little grass survive endless gales at 30� below zero.