 |
| Severe erosion damaging an archaeological site on the Aliulik Peninsula |
The most significant find of our archaeological survey of the East shore of Alitak Bay has to be the sheer volume of new archaeological sites that we found. We found 34 new sites and all but one of them is prehistoric. Before we left there were less than 10 known sites in the whole area. So we basically put the 'archaeology on the map' so to speak.
In general we found that the sites are in pretty good condition - only 2 of them were really eroding severely (both shown on this post - the processing pits and faunal midden). The main thing damaging the sites is burrowing foxes and bears digging out beds to sleep in. We found that wherever there is a good view a bear had dug out a bed - I called such beds 'a room with a view'. Since archaeological sites tend to be built where there are good views out over the water - they also have a lot of bears digging holes into them. And there are a lot of bears on that part of the island!
I was also surprised by the number of sites we found that appear older than 1000 years. Normally historic and late prehistoric sites are the most common discovery. But not so on this survey. Based on my rough field catagorizations (no radiocarbon dating here!) a lot of the sites seem to date to around 1200 years ago. This was a time period when many of the marginal areas of the Gulf Alaska were abandoned and people seemed to have concentrated on Kodiak. Kodiak has a diverse and robust environment and people can find food here even when times are hard. Alitak Bay seems to have been a favored place at this time period!
Patrick
 |
| layers of fauna in a midden - mostly cod |
 |
| A piece of pottery drilled to hang |
 |
| A 1200 year old (or so) oil lamp |
 |
| Processing pits as seen in an erosion profile |
 |
| Probing a depression to check if it is cultural or not |
 |
| A positive test - that's charcoal! |
No comments:
Post a Comment