_The skull._--The most noteworthy feature about the Igloo remains is
the marked distinctiveness of the skull. This strikes the observer
at the first sight of the specimens, and the impression is only
strengthened by detail examination. The skulls are very narrow,
long, and high. They differ plainly from anything except occasional
individual specimens, either about Barrow or along the rest of the
west coast of Alaska, with the possible exception of a few groups of
Seward Peninsula. They recall strongly the crania of Labrador and south
Greenland. It is the Labrador-Greenland type throughout, men, women,
and even the two children. It is a group outside of the range of local
variation. It is a strange Eskimo group, either developed here in
former times as it developed in Greenland and Labrador, and possibly
the Seward Peninsula, or one that had come here from places where such
type had already been realized.
The following data (the individual measurements will appear in a later
number of the Catalogue of Crania) show the differences between the
Igloo and the surface material, the latter both of the Van Valin and
of the author's collections, and the valuable Stefánsson material,
now at the American Museum, from Point Barrow. They need but little
comment. They show clearly on one hand the wholly Eskimo nature of the
Igloo skulls, and on the other their distinctness from those of the
later burials, both of Barrow and Point Barrow. The vault especially is
characteristic--narrow, long, high, more or less keel-shaped. The face
in general is much more alike in the three groups; nevertheless its
absolute height and breadth in the Igloo series are slightly smaller
than in the other two, and there are minor differences in the orbits
and the palate.