This paper analyzes the culture history of the little-known Okhotsk culture and makes suggestions about its relationships with neighboring cultures. The Okhotsk culture is important in understanding the cultural history of the northern Pacific because it shows no affinities with the Ainu and Japanese cultures and has an economy remarkably like that of the more distant Aleut and Eskimo. The Okhotsk culture appears to have historical relationships with cultures in Siberia and Manchuria. The maritime hunting economy of this culture was probably derived from the Eskimo via Bering Sea and the Siberian coast. Other cultural elements, the most noticeable being ceramics, were of mainland origin and served as an influential force in forming Okhotsk culture. Once established on Sakhalin, this culture moved southward along the northeastern coast of Hokkaido, where a secondary and later cultural center developed. Migrations up the Kuriles occurred shortly thereafter. This culture probably flourished for at least a thousand years, beginning in Sakhalin several centuries before Christ and persisting until sometime after A.D. 1000 and possibly until the 17th century in the Kuriles. Several unsolved problems concerning the Okhotsk culture are presented.

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It has been the general assumption that all the oldest New World cultures were direct importations from Asia–more specifically, from Siberia–and that the prototypes for their distinctive features must be sought in this latter area. A number of successive migrations by very different groups have been taken for granted to account for the varied archaeological picture in Palaeo-Indian times, to say nothing of the subsequent linguistic and physical diversity, but any contacts with the Old World on the Neo-Indian horizon have been generally viewed with suspicion. No specific evidence in support of this viewpoint has ever been adduced, it is true, but so long as Siberia remained a terra incognita, it was assumed that the proofs must be there, awaiting only the spade of the excavator. The proposition was argued, as it were, on the grounds of historical necessity.

In recent years the Okhotsk Sea region has become of increasing interest to students of New World cultural origins and relationships, particularly with regard to the problem of the Aleutians as a diffusion channel. But any real attack on this problem has been hampered by the gross inadequacy of the data. The few available sources in western languages are far from satisfactory; and attempts to augment these by utilizing illustrations from Japanese publications, divorced from the explanatory text, are fraught with danger.The writer has therefore undertaken a systematic survey of the rather considerable field work done in this region by Japanese archaeologists in prewar years. Reports on this have been published exclusively in the Japanese language, which has placed them effectively beyond the reach of American archaeologists, although certain ones have been cited in American works for their illustrations.

Alaskan pottery techniques are distinguished by considerable use of a variety of organic tempering materials, in marked contrast to the rest of aboriginal North America. So pronounced a focus on the threshhold of the New World would suggest that the practice might have been borrowed from Asia. It will therefore be of interest to ascertain the status of organic tempers in northeastern Asia as compared with Alaska.