These days in archaeology it is rare that one gets to survey a huge area all at once. For one thing, in the USA, outside Alaska, most places have been surveyed. For another, it is rare to find a landowner who controls a large, contiguous swath of land that needs surveying. What's cool about surveying a large area is that you get to see how people used the landscape. You get to see spatial patterns - how certain types of sites are located in different places.
On our survey we got to investigate 2 large bays (Zachar and Spiridon), and it was interesting how we found different types of sites in the different parts of the bays - and how both bays, in turn, pretty much exhibited the same pattern.
The basic pattern was that we found large 'winter villages' on the outer coasts between the bays. Then along the coastline in the outer bays we found practically no sites. In the middle Bay area we started to find small settlements of 1 or 2 houses - these are seasonal camps. Then in the outer inner bay we found lots and lots of 'fire reddened rock and charcoal stained soil' sites with no house depressions. I interpret these as sites where people were catching a lot of something (likely either seals or cod) and smoke processing it. And some of these sites also had a distinctive type of fire reddened rock - round greywacke cobbles rather than slate.
Then in the inner bay at the boundary between the deep water and the mud flats that extend a couple of miles more to the head of the bays we found a few small villages - the villages tended to be older than 1000 years. Finally at the heads of the bays near the outlets of the large salmon streams we found fairly large 'fish camp villages'. These sites tended to be younger than 1000 years and were probably occupied all Fall.
Another interesting pattern is that the 'processing' and 'fish camp' villages tended to lack shell middens while the 'seasonal camps' and 'winter villages' were almost always associated with thick shell middens.
Anyway, interesting patterns!
Patrick
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| Fire reddened cobbles exposed in bird burrows and no house depressions. This was probably a site where Alutiiq people smoke processed sea mammals and/or fish |
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| U-shaped cobble spall - typically found at 3-4K year old smoke processing sites |
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| Close up of fire reddened cobbles |
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| Typical small 'fire cracked rock and charcoal' type site - a travel/camp site? |
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| Close up of eroding fire cracked rock and charcoal stained soil |
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| Positive probe test. I found charcoal stained soil - hence, it is a site |
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| Small single room house depressions indicative of a circa 2000 year old small village |
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| Large village with very lush site vegetation |
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| An eroding shell midden composed of the remains of past meals (I see cod, clams, blue mussel, salmon and moon snail) - shell middens are easy to spot! |
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| This one stumped us - some sort of prehistoric fish trap or a modern day breakwater built to protect a beached boat? |
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| Notched cobbles used to weight the bottoms of nets at a 3-4K old site that presently is no longer located on the water |
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