Second half of the survey

As I related in the earlier posts the second half of our recent survey was spent amongst the trees on north Afognak.  There we documented a second set of fish traps, mapped prehistoric villages, and looked for associated petroglyphs.  We did not find any petroglyphs which was slightly disappointing.  The pecked holes and slashes style petroglyphs seem to be associated with fish traps and so we had been hopeful that we would find them.  However the local rock was a sort of a 'baked' red chert and not very conducive to pecked designs.

The fish traps on North Afognak were similar to the first ones we looked that in that both were situated in the lower intertidal zone and both consisted of built up stone walls.  However, the second set was built parallel to the tidal current against the shore rather than extending out from shore across the current like the first set.  In the second set it seems the dropping tide would trap the fish against the shore rather than exposing the fish on the tidal mud flats above a wall.  And this makes sense given the shoreline particulars of each area - on North Afognak a stone wall out across the current would not have worked because the lagoon above the fish traps does not dry out like it does in the first set of traps that we documented.  Hence the need to modify the fish trap design to fit the parameters of the particular environment.

It seems the Alutiiq fish trap builders used their ingenuity to match their traps to particular circumstances rather than relying on a one design fits all sort of template.  Patrick