Fish Traps and Sea Stacks

There is a rich site on top of this tiny sea stack

Friday's helicopter survey was very productive.  We found 5 new (previously unreported) archaeological sites, checked on the conditions at another 14 previously known sites, and documented 2 sets of petroglyphs (this will be in a later post).  That's a lot.  But what's really cool is that we found a new type of site and another fish trap too.

The new type of site are these rich faunal middens on top of tiny sea stacks.  Refuge rocks are a similar site type.  Refuge rocks are fortress rocks with villages on top.  Basically little castles.  But the new sea stack sites we found are really tiny and lack house depressions - many even lack a flat area to put a house!.  And yet there are whale bones, fire cracked rock from hearths, fish bones - all sorts of stuff.  These are rich sites and they are surrounded by precipitous cliffs.  I can't imagine climbing up on top of these things.

I bet the Alutiiq inhabitants had ladders and ropes for getting up an down.  And I am sure they were related to some sort of defensive activity.  Now we will have to look at more of them and see if we can start to find patterns about where they are located and what is in them.  That's how we will learn what they were used for and represent.

Fish 'corals' were an unknown site type on Kodiak until last June when I found an intertidal fish trap while on the Afognak Land Survey (click here for link to last June's post).  Weirs are a similar type of feature but they are designed to channel fish to a spot where they can be speared or netted.  Intertidal fish traps seem designed to concentrate or capture fish on a falling tide.  At high tide the fish swim up above the rock walls and then when the tide drops they are trapped in the rock-walled corals.

The ones we found on this trip are in front a large, late prehistoric village that I mapped way back in 2013.  Back when I mapped the village I missed the traps!  But in my defense I did map the site at high tide when the rock walls were under water.  The traps are rock walls parallel to the shore - one wall is about 100 meters long while the other is 150 meters or more (we did not land to closely inspect and map the feature).  When the tide drops it looks like the fish would have been trapped on the beach between the walls and the shore.

Now that we recognize what these fish traps look like I bet we start to find a lot more of them.  And they are especially easy to see from a helicopter.  I can foresee aerial surveys at low tide to look for these sorts of features in the future.  Patrick

No need to climb up on top if you got a helicopter!

Now that's a rich faunal midden - the red rock is fire-cracked rock (FCR)

Keller with an ulu ('fish knife') - we photographed but did not collect artifacts

The lines of rocks on each side seem to be designed to trap fish on a falling tide

Faunal midden captured in the roots of a fallen tree

Slate lance preform and fire-cracked rock from an eroded site

Molly in an old house depression in the forest