Tikchik village: a nineteenth century riverine community in ... - Cluster

VANSTONE: TIKCHIK VILLAGE 323how people might react to other innovations, the advantages of whichwere less readily apparent.Turning to the third category of innovation mentioned above,that of new forms based on new models, there are, unfortunately, noexamples from the Tikchik site. It would seem, therefore, that it wasseldom if ever necessary for the Eskimos to improvise in order tomaintain and continue to use the imported implements in their possession.An interesting example of an attempt by Eskimos to reproducea non-Eskimo artifact locally was half of a sandstone bulletmold recovered at Crow Village (Oswalt and VanStone, 1967, p. 76).The various specifics of innovation that have been discussed hereare interesting because they provide a certain amount of informationabout Eskimo response to the new items of material culture that wereavailable to them. The people of Tikchik doubtless had a cautiousapproach to things new, but like their contemporaries at Crow Village,seem to have been interested in experimenting with new materials.Neither the archaeological record nor written historical dataallows us to elaborate on the selection factor and trade materials, butit is likely that the inventory of goods traded in the Nushagak Riverregion was small at the beginning of the Russian period and graduallygrew until at the time the site was abandoned the people presumablyhad access to a sizeable number and variety of trade items.In spite of this, however, the Tikchik collection indicates the samecontinuity with emphasis on the retention of traditional forms thatwas noted for Crow Village (Oswalt and VanStone, 1967, p. 77).