"Woolly Mammoth Ivory Sculpture component with 'Silver, and Garnet...The base will be sculpted of Chinese Blackwood, work in progress."

"First design from the bench" "Goddess of Woolly Mammoth Ivory and a crown of Silver, Peridot, Garnet, Amethyst, and Blue Topaz." "This mask will be supported by a 'Chinese Blackwood' body and Teak Burro Base...

Seven feet in length and out of the permafrost to be kept in it's original condition as specimen. Young bull Woolly Mammoth tusk from the right side of the skull with an age of perhaps forty thousand years in the permafrost.

Woolly Mammoth tusk following dissection in two pieces to expedite international shipping to my studio. Some ivory discoveries do not have specimen potential and are used for my sculpture enterprise, this is one of those tusks...This is exceptional coloration of the interior of a tusk. Due to the cracking, this ivory will primarily be used for jewelry compositions.

Fireweed flowers about to be cooled off by the incoming rain. Always beautiful in the arctic and the farther north, these flowers grow just inches off the tundra as the cool air restricts tall growth.

It was amusingly close encounter with this caribou and while I tried for a great photo she came even closer to me. At the point she jabbed me with her antlers while I photographed her and lucky for me her antlers were still in velvet and relatively soft. I moved on...

Endless and absent of people for hundreds of miles, my old beaches, for years in my sojourn alone and trekking as with boat. Too often adventure finds me in my quest of learning and understanding this region and grants me peace and definition."A certain 'third world' living has found me in this region in my dreams and in my summers...all of my life."

The Bering Sea on the left and a fresh water tributary on the right side. The green tundra strip running between is common to contain prehistoric earthen house sites. Each of these house sites contain ivory and artifacts and the occasional human remains.

A fine well preserved example of another harpoon carved from caribou antler, Bering Sea Thule.
This particular harpoon does not have a groove for an end blade but instead the tip is the blade. A truly remarkable discovery and a squirrel did the work. Just under four inches long and used to harpoon seals mainly. I did not excavate any farther yet it is probable that there is additional findings.

Above the exposed harpoon is yet another uncovered. It is often that a cache of artifacts can be excavated in the same site as they were left for future use by ancient hunters. It is common to find similar artifacts in prehistoric dwellings in a cache deposit.

Removed and cleaned from the borrow entrance of the ground squirrel, it now appears to be carved from caribou antler and very elaborate in design. Some harpoon toggles have a slit at the end to accommodate a stone blade to aid in performance. Even though it is very elaborate it is a representative of the 'Thule period of the Bering Sea region.'

With a closer examination, it appears the squirrel uncovered an ivory seal harpoon.

In the entrance of this ground squirrel den, this stone caught my eye and I peered closer to examine it and then the bone object came into view.

While beach combing I regularly search out eroded areas in the event of some artifact or bone that may be visible. On this small rise was either a camp site or observation area for an ancient hunter as the elevation gave advantage for viewing both marine mammals and other animals presence in all directions.

Beach combing the Bering Sea can produce any amount of surprises at any time including bears and caribou. The occasional moose and washed up walrus is not uncommon. In the photo is a walrus vertebrate as it lay, probably nine inches across.

"Earlier in the expedition I ventured a walk in the Fairbanks area around Fox township and found this grizzly skull.'' It appears to be last winter's incident as there was still flesh on parts of the bone. No other bones were found anywhere in the area and remains a mystery where they may have been. Fairbanks is a location I often visit prior to my arctic trip.

Toklat Grizzly on the run, in the sand, it's tracks and indeed witnessing him in all his antics with no doubt in a playful mood...

Immature Woolly Mammoth tusk retrieved from the river in the background. In the same river a young Toklat Grizzly bear charged straight towards me as I was searching the gravel for fossils. I had no time to react as this bear came out of the bush in a run. He grabbed a salmon twenty feet away from where I was standing and raced with it down the gravel bar, turned back and ran towards me again all the while ignoring me. Just as he turned to return to the bush he paused long enough to look at me and disappeared. Shortly after I discovered the tusk and pulled my camera out for this photo.

"The Guardian of Dewey Lake" in Skagway Alaska, I carved in a cliff face in 1982 to watch over the many hikers on their way up the mountain, and I am back from the Arctic with more mammoth ivory specimens and carving material, wonderful trip...Bill Sidmore

"Following the herd to the Arctic as of 9 July, 2009" Off to the field and villages of the 'Chuckchi and Bering.' Will be back to the studio carving again for my good clients with more photos and experiences of camping on the trails of the ancient Mammoth"

"Out of a eroded subterranean house of the "Thule" Eskimo." "Age of nine hundred years."
"Walrus Ivory and a child's toy" "The story that it may hold, as a toy handed down from generation to generation until left behind, perhaps as the family moved on to another area for a different game quest, different season for caribou, instead of seal along the beach. While the family was out the house collapsed during a powerful Siberian storm front and all of it's contents buried and never recovered. Centuries later the storms found their way again to the old house along the beach and eroded it's foundations of whale bone and driftwood. The doll was found...

"As It Lay" "In the gravel, at once buried then uncovered by spring thaw as the ice goes." So very far from any occupied place, as not even a village of the Inuit can be found in several months walk in any direction. Immature Woolly Mammoth tusk half buried as so many others remained within the gravels, unseen. Clear waters, Grayling trout and Arctic Char swim by and easily seen in great numbers, they have no fear of me as no others trek here.

"Ancient Hunter's Tent Foundation Stones" Not an uncommon site used by ancient nomads of the Arctic, evident of a group constantly on the move. The proximity of the dwelling to the sea is within view yet far enough away to maintain a stealthy position. The white objects are marine mammal bones left at this site and although this is an ancient site, both bones and ivories have a lengthy longevity due to the temperatures and angle of the sun. I have discovered a partially buried child's wood bow far out from the beach on the tundra and in good shape even after perhaps hundreds of years lost there...

"Pleistocene Mammoths" The big bulls often supported sixteen foot long tusks from the base of the tusk to the tip. The weight of such tusks, tipped the scales at two hundred pounds and some tusks are still white in color after thousands of years in frozen sand. If bones and ivory are deposited in a dark humus soil rich in a soup of vegetable detritus then staining occurs, however the river sand deposits are lacking much in the way of coloring agents as the ivory slowly and permanently freezes...

"Permafrost" "Classic example of the Ice Age frozen in time." Within this frozen land mass contains all fossils of the Pleistocene Ice Age...I have discovered complete sea gull skulls, beaver skulls with an entire fossil beaver dam composed of chewed wood sections, extinct Arctic Lion Skulls as well as ancient Eskimo burials locked entirely in ice. This permafrost is as sturdy as concrete and melts extremely slow as the summers are cool and short lived in the far north...

"Arctic Alaska Tundra Permafrost melting into the Sea" "Global Warming" although rather controversial, there is and has been permafrost dissipation that does expose frozen land mass to reveal a 'time machine' of sorts by the fossils it contains and releases into a river, or in this case, the Beaufort Sea. The 'slick' looking surface of the displaced mass is frozen land and will eventually thaw away into the beach. Often times a mammoth's tusk will be broken in half as the permafrost land mass calves off the parent tundra. Many occasions I have discovered tusks still frozen in permafrost with a section snapped off...

"Out of Place" A Tree branch or a whale bone from an ancient dwelling on the river, or perhaps an old grave marker. Curious to look closer and discover why a piece of wood stands out so dramatically on a tundra where there are not trees for hundreds of miles to the south from the Arctic circle. Why bring a piece of wood so far inland and leave here. As I sit beside the piece as my boat waits on the river bank, I test it's surface and it's eroded layers that count back centuries, the seasons that froze it and thawed it to the cycles around the sun to number ten thousand years and perhaps longer. A Mammoth tusk as it lay, in the tundra where it has fallen and perhaps the last mammoth...

"Fear is not knowing and Fear is not in the Land." Being comfortable is solitude and braced with an embrace. The breeze across the brow and the scent of belonging and the chill of a light rain. In the drift and on the move as all things do, different paces, and across the universe as passenger and pilot. Alone, the drift on the river that flows in all directions and circles to the north and into the trail of the Mammoth...

"A river that runs north to the Arctic Ocean", fifty miles by way of the crow. Alone and there to listen and to see into no change in the land for ten thousand years. Just under the surface, are stories found while dreaming, shown to us all of the time in life but lost to distractions. Slow and deliberate the pace and stopping for a bone on the gravel then a walk farther down to the bend in the river. A tooth of an extinct lion and a jaw section of a dire wolf. Back to the boat and shove off to the stream and over a two meter mammoth tusk with the tip just above the surface.
Orange and unmistakable, dark green lines running along the beam and the center just under the moss. A religion to look closely this tusk in its natural place and placed there buy unknown currents as the same current takes me farther downstream and up to the Arctic...

"Arctic North Slope, Alaska" "This is where it is, this is what it looks like, the area where ancient Woolly Mammoth fossils are found . The place where the land speaks to those that listen and the definition of 'self' is discovered. It is the location where we can be in the present and the past at the same time. This is where were were before the great change and where this change moved us away. To go back and be with the 'Land' and what I consider 'Home.'

"When I was on one of the many visits to Savoonga St. Lawrence Island," and the many occasions to visit my late friend Nelson Elowa, he had one story that remained with me since those early days. It was a time of Shamans and their way before the white traders. Travel to and from the villages were by flying upside down with their feet held vertical. They had to be careful in the event that a villager might spot them. If this would occur, they would be forced to fall into the sea to conceal their magic and the story of how they got to and from the villages so quickly. Also these Shamans would swim with the walrus, polar bears, whales or any sea creature to discover their locations so they could 'fly' back to the villages to report to the hunters of where to go...

"Okvik Tradition Harpoon Shaft Ornament of the Bering Sea, Siberia." This object is not of my personal collection but illustrates a design most unusual and provocative. Everything about this object is interesting and was a burial discovery with other objects discovered of very controlled sculpted expertise. Few people are aware of the wonder of the Arctic and the deliberate functional art that these Yupik, Ipiutak and other groups were produceing for thousands of years. They existed in a world unimagineably different than the present with equal mystic traditions that are lost to unwritten history...

"Old Bering Sea age, St. Lawrence Island, Alaska," Garment ornament of walrus ivory and elaborately engraved, is displayed on a polished section of Kobuk river jade...I have seen many examples of artifacts that incorporate nephrite jade from this river source...

"Ancient Walrus Ivory Walrus Harpoon Projectile" "Old Bering Sea Period following the Okvik tradition discovered on St. Lawrence Island Alaska." Beautifully engraved, this detaching harpoon was made with precision and sensitivity to long standing traditions to (Shamanistic) spiritual concepts extending from the coastal regions of Siberia. All objects of this ivory or bone material have been preserved by permanently frozen conditions called permafrost...

Ancient 'Okvik' Eskimo harpoon shaft ornament. The Yupik culture of St. Lawrence Island have produced the most important prehistoric Shamanistic expressions known in the circumpolar region of the world. These ornaments have function and are often referred to as "Winged Objects." Constructed of walrus ivory and carved, engraved with a rodent's tooth, and polished with volcanic sands while weathering winters in subterrainial houses under a whale blubber fueled stone lamps. Okvik age (+-) 3000 years...

"Micro-crystalline igneous basalt lanceolate end blade," discovered eroding from a cut bank on a beach following a severe storm, Shimya island of the Aleutians, Alaska. A very exceptional lance point used in hunting sperm whales as they passed through the region in their annual migrations. This spear most likely had a bone or ivory whale harpoon on one end with the lance end-blade on the other... Remarkable condition and superior craftsmanship, twelve hundred years age...

"Choris End Blade" Discovered in a sand blow out on an arctic beach following a bear excavation in search for ground squirrels. This projectile blade is made of beautiful blue-green chert with lateral flaking with a polished erosion from traveling in the sand for thousands of years, in and out of the ocean between storms until it was exposed by a grizzly bear. This is just one story for the history that this artifact has shared. Chert and such materials last well into one geological time period and into another, ice ages as all ages when unrecorded history to the times where artifacts such as this have always been in existance from the earliest cultures of mankind...

"Ancient Men of the Arctic" in a time when a certain magic prevailed...It is so refreshing when I design an association of a hunter-prey that is a friendship gathering... Sculpted of beach found mammoth ivory with blue color in the reverse...

"Woolly Mammoth Ivory"..."Pumpkin color and a favorite for me to discover"...Occasionally prehistoric Walrus Ivory is of 'Pumpkin' color and considered very scarce, the composition is fairly recent idea of a 'friendly' interaction with Eskimos and Walrus in a 'Dream' as Shaman often fly and also transform into various arctic animals and fantastic creatures...

"On the beach and a rough landing from the Bering Sea during a storm from Siberia." While camped on the beach sometimes for days waiting for better weather, I made the best of things and combed the beaches. Found and being moved by the surf and shifting sand and gravels, buried and uncovered again until I pass it during a time when it was visible. Many times I passed this spot and nothing was visible as the tusk was under surf and sand with forty knot offshore gales.

"Eskimo Arrow end Blade" Discovered in the Escholtz Bay region near Kotzebue Alaska. The blade is of bluegreen chert and the base is of Woolly Mammoth Ivory with a drilled hole to attach to an arrow shaft, this was an easily replaced option in the event that the arrow blade was damaged and a new end blade was added. The lacing was replaced with modern hemp. A very nice artifact and exibits a craft of an age of twelve hundred years.

"Ancient Woolly Mammoth ivory knife with slate blade from the Kotzebue region, Alaska."
Both handle and blade found together with a replacement wood pin added to re-attach the blade to the handle. Rare find and very significant artifact attributed to the ancient Eskimo. Elaborate fantastic animal form (unidentifiable) as perhaps a shaman vision deity. "Note bottom photo for a closer view of the animal form."

Ancient Knife handle of Woolly Mammoth Ivory with a slate knife blade. Discovered eroding from a river bank where there once was an Inuit village near Kotzebue, Alaska. "Unidentified anthropomorphic animal form."

"Once in a Life-Time Discovery" Arctic Fluted Clovis end blade. Discovered on a ridge above the American River, Alaska. A chance find with a collection of chips and broken blades used and / discarded by ancient Mammoth hunters. The high point ridge area was an ideal observation post for these ancient hunters to view the distance for approaching mammoths. This fluted spear blade was left behind and on the surface when discovered. Note; the blade has lichen growth along it's surface.

Pumpkin colored Woolly Mammoth Ivory discovered in an Arctic river and sculpted by;
William Sidmore, extremely beautiful and rare shade of ivory...

Woolly Mammoth Ivory of a color very rare, I refer to this shade as "Pumpkin" and unfortunately this is from a fairly small section discovered in a river. Uncommon color and sculpted on the reverse as well, by William SIdmore

"Woolly Mammoth Tusk" "Half of a meter deep in this river behind me in the Photo" "This tusk is perfect condition and of the best that can be expected" Arctic Circle Region, William Sidmore

"Woolly Mammoth Tusk" "Discovered in the Arctic region of Alaska, blue in color due to the presence of both iron oxide and phosphorus mineral deposited on it's surface, otherwise known as (vivianite), occasionally permeates deep within the ivory"

"Woolly Mammoth Tusk" "Following the spring thaw from the previous winter's snows, this tusk was washed out of the ice from a twenty thousand year burial, and found"

"Woolly Mammoth Tusk" "Discovered just below the surface in an Arctic river, the photo depicts the tusk on site" "This particular tusk was broken but of the highest quality carving grade"