Community Archaeology: Week Two

     We've moved a lot of dirt at the Kashevarof site since my last post, and we have learned a great deal.
     We still have not seen any bears where we are digging, but the location is perfect near Salonie Creek and the red salmon are coming in. We just have the squawking of the ravens and the chippering of the magpies to keep us company as we trowel away at layers of soil and ash that has been undisturbed for thousands of years. Every once in a while one of the volunteers will have this realization, hold up an artifact they've found in their unit and say, "I'm the first person to have touched this in a really really long time..."

    As we are entering the second week of excavation, it looks like we have at least three distinct occupations; the house feature under the Katmai ash fall being a Koniaq era fishing camp with ulus, built on top of a less intensive (absence of any permanent structures or hearths) Kachemak Bay era site marked by red chert flakes and flake tools, ulus, etc. Under an in situ grey ash that has been dated to around 4000 BP, we are finding evidence for an Ocean Bay era occupation as well. During this period, from around 7500 BP to 3500 BP, the Alutiiq were mobile hunter-gatherers and had not yet developed a reliance on fishing. They subsisted almost entirely on marine mammal hunting and used long lances made of ground slate to hunt them.

    Although archaeologists tend to emphasize the importance of features over 'pretty' artifacts, I have to say that we have found some showstoppers over the last week. Artifacts can be very useful for dating, as diagnostic of a particular style or manufacture, especially when a diagnostic artifact helps confirm the soil deposition of the site. We dig because we are passionate about learning the history of the Alutiiq way of life on Kodiak over time, but everyone likes to find something...

...especially when its a 4000+ BP perfectly intact marine mammal hunting lance!

        Ground slate lance used for hunting marine mammals during the Ocean Bay era, 4000+ BP. See maker's mark incised at the base and tip. The tip of a poison covered lance was meant to break off in the animal, killing it slowly. The maker's mark identified the hunter when the animal washed up on the beach days later.

 Ashley Weller with a gorgeous Kachemak Bay era ulu! According to museum staff, ulus with semi-lunate cutting surfaces were probably used for cutting, while ulus with flat cutting surfaces would have been better for scraping.

Ryan Cross, a geophysicist and friend of many at the dig came to survey with his Ground Penetrating Radar. Areas around the site that show potential for future excavation were imaged for house depressions.
 

Close encounters with a Kodiak bear...gut.

     Today was an off day for the Community Archaeology dig, but not for Alutiiq Museum activities on Kodiak. Jill Lipka, museum staff, has had a seventy foot bear gut thawing in her backyard and we have been waiting in anticipation for it to be ready for processing.

     Traditionally, bear gut was sewn by skin-sewers into parkas, blankets, and even smoke-hole covers in houses. It is thought that a bear-gut parka would likely have been a status item since it would take two or so good sized bears to make one single garment.

     To clean the gut, we used traditional ground slate ulus from the museum's teaching collection, which was a unique experience in itself- to have the opportunity to do experimental archaeology with tools from the archaeological record! And now I can say from experience that they worked very well to scrape the gut clean. We also tried unmodified shell as scrapers, which also worked well. The whole process of scraping the gut inside and out took about two and a half hours with six women working at once, talking and bonding over the general experience and the smell. The smell was pungent to say the least, but not at all as bad as you'd think it would be.

     The next steps in processing the gut will be to blow air into the ends of the two sections, tie off the ends, put round stoppers in the other to hold the shape, and hang them to dry. Jill Lipka is experimenting with different oils to use as emulsifiers to soften the gut and keep it flexible and durable once it has dried.

     This activity is part of a museum effort to apply for a grant for a broader gut sewing project. Hopefully future experimental projects will shed some light on the 'ins' and 'outs' of working with gut and other inner skins such as esophagus.

Scraping the gut clean with ulus, or women's knives. Photo cred: Ashley Weller

Turning the gut inside out, see tray of gut before cleaning on the right. Photo cred: Ashley Weller

                                                          A finished gut skin parka.
                   Photo: from the publication Alutiit/Sugpiat: A Catalog of the Collections of the Kunstkamera edited by Yuri E. Berezkin

Community Archaeology: The Kashevarof Site

     Today was the first day of real digging at the Kashevarof site KOD-1132 for Community Archaeology on Kodiak Is. The site is on the North side of Women's Bay, nestled in Salonie Valley on a raised berm above Salonie Creek.

     We are all making bets on what the site was used for- what people were doing here and why and how the ancient Alutiiq were using Women's Bay over time. Nearby sites give us an interesting picture that sheds some light on the prehistoric seasonal round.

     Bruhn Point is a 7000 BP-3000 BP fish processing site dominated by an assemblage of ulus and netsinkers used for processing large amounts of fish. Salonie Mound, which proved to be dated to the same time period was a winter village with house features, hearths, and other finds that indicated a substantial settlement at the site. The Amak site, with oldest dates of around 5000 BP, is dominated by an assemblage of ground slate bayonets and other gear that would have been used for seal hunting, likely out of a temporary camp where hunters brought their kills for drying and smoking. So far, three sites spanning from the Ocean Bay (7500 BP-3500 BP) to Kachmak (3500 BP-1000 BP) eras have been used for different functions in the same Bay.

     What does that say about what people were doing here and why they chose this particular bay for these different activities? The hope is that excavating at the Kashevarof site will help us complete the picture- one more piece of the puzzle to complete the story of the ancient Alutiiq and their way of life.

     Prehistoric archaeology on Kodiak is unique in the fact that most of the island was covered in white volcanic tephra in 1912 from the eruption of Mt Katmai on the Alaska Peninsula. When we excavate just under the modern soil horizon, the presence of the volcanic tephra tells us that the site has not been disturbed after 1912. This can be an issue in areas that may have been plowed in WWII for roads or other engineering projects. So, we have good piece of mind that what we excavate under the Katmai ash is prehistoric, although keeping in mind the hundred or so years before 1912 that there were cattle ranchers in the area--and almost immediately we found what look like cow bones. Large, robust, and weathered, the bones are almost from the lumbering bovine beasts that once populated the small valley.

     As digging progressed and the in situ living surface was taken down into the first cultural layer of the site, it became apparent that a large square depression at the West section of the site was a house. A clear wall cut was evident when the Katmai ash was taken off, but it wasn't until post-holes and a door appeared that it really came together as a correct hypothesis. A little later, ulus and red chert flakes were found associated with the house feature.

     There are a few things we can hypothesize about the house feature given the artifacts found with it so far. First, that it is at least 1000 years old. Chipped stone technology indicates an older site and the Koniaq did not utilize it like the Kachemak Bay or Ocean Bay traditions did. Also, that the house and the site in general is probably associated with fish processing activities. Ulus, or women's knives, were ground slate knives used to process a large amount of fish with less maintenance than chipped stone tools. Ulus, ulu preforms, and worked slate in larger proportion than red chert artifacts suggest a Kachemak era site over Ocean Bay. The presence of red chert flakes throughout the site does indicate chipped stone technology as well, but we have not yet found evidence for men's tools or knives that would be more associated with sea mammal hunting, an earlier adaptation.

     This is not to say that we will later find evidence of Ocean Bay era activity at the same site! The upper layers indicate early Kachemak activity (around 3500 BP) because of the presence of chipped stone technology along with ground slate technology. Ground slate working was probably integrated over time and definitely not all at once-it would have been a gradual change in response to more of a reliance on fishing. People probably developed a reliance on fishing because hunting individual sea mammals no longer supported populations which were growing more concentrated into villages, no longer mobile hunter-gatherers.

     It will be interesting to see what develops over the next few weeks at the Kashevarof site, hopefully it will give us a more complete perspective of the prehistoric Alutiiq seasonal round over time!

Kashevarof site excavated to bottom of Katmai Ash, 1912 marker

Outline of house feature at the top of the prehistoric surface

House feature with Jill for scale