Nunalleq - KOD 1284

 

The site prior to excavation - quite the thicket

For the last 2 weeks I have been helping lead a small archaeological excavation out at the head of Womens Bay.  Molly and I found the site a few years ago (click here for post and look at bottom photo in post). It had been mostly disturbed by earth moving and gravel quarrying activities post WWII, but a tiny pie-shaped sliver of the site remained undisturbed.  The site resembles a mesa with steep slopes on all sides where the ground had been removed, and there was about a meter of overburden and thick brush on top of the site.  Molly and I only found the site because we could directly examine the disturbed soil profile on the steep slope and noticed a deeply buried, charcoal-stained, cultural layer.  Since it was capped by a volcanic ash layer that we know is 3500-4000 years old, we knew the site had to be older than that and we were hopeful that it was much older.

And so this year with support from Koniag Inc. we excavated the site.  It was a lot of work removing all the brush and overburden on top of the site (imagine thick roots and lots of gravel). And we laid out an excavation grid that covered practically the whole site, and then dug, dug, dug away until we got to the bottom.

What's interesting is that despite evidence for a lot of human activity at the site we found very few artifacts.  We found 2 cultural layers - a thin ephemeral occupation on top right below the white ash of the 1912 Katmai eruption (probably dates to around 3000 years ago), and a much more deeply buried occupation associated with toss and turned 'paleo' sod clumps, lots of charcoal and red ochre stained living surfaces, and relatively few artifacts.

We did find a few ground slate hunting lance (bayonet) fragments, 2 flensing knife fragments, a couple of whetstones for sharpening them and some 'saw-and-snap' ground slate lance preforms, but that is about it.  Ordinarily, in a site from this time period with evidence for so much dirt moving activities and so much charcoal one would expect to find hundreds of chipped stone flakes, and much more worked slate and other manufacturing debris.  But we found practically nothing.  Last year at a similarly aged site, but with far less evidence for 'dirt' landscaping and with much more ephemeral living surfaces, we found many more finished tools.

So what was going on at the site we excavated this year?  Based on the stratigraphy and style of tools that we did find it looks to date to around 5-6 thousand years ago, and clearly, based on the tools that we did find, the inhabitants we doing something related to sea mammal hunting and butchering.  But why so few artifacts?  Did we excavate just outside of the main site area (i.e we 'missed' the site), or were the inhabitants primarily only using tools made of organic materials like wood and bone that have since rotted away?  We do know that there was relatively little tool manufacturing going on (hence the lack of stone debris), and that reduced oxygen fires were a part of what was going on (hence the copious charcoal - if fires burn down with plenty of oxygen all that remains is ash and very little charcoal). 

Down near the bottom of the site we found a structure of some sort.  It had wood posts that likely supported a sod and dirt covered roof. It also looks like it had a stacked sod wall.  And yet it did not have a flat floor inside and the inhabitants seemed to have used an existing depression on the hillside - it was not dug out down to glacial till and flattened out like such structures are ordinarily.

The site is exciting because we found a new 'type' of site for the area.  Close by we have found sites associated with fishing, with waiting for and ambushing sea mammals, established villages, and sites where the inhabitants smoke-processed meat.  Each of these sites was associated with its own particular assemblage of tools, manufacturing debris, and features (or lack there of).  What's exciting is that at this year's dig we did not find lots of artifacts and yet there was a lot of activity taking place at the locality. I've never encountered a site like that before.  And I still do not quite understand what exactly was going on at the site, but at least we have now established a pattern that we can try and figure out in the future.

Patrick

It took us a day and a half to get to this point - clearing off the brush and then the overburden

Getting down into the interesting stuff

Libby's flensing knife tip fragment

Hunter's whetstone and ground 'saw and snap' slate bayonet preform

bayonet (hunting lance) fragment

Molly finds a bayonet mid section

Feature at the bottom of the site - the inhabitants made use of an existing depression

Molly maps the feature

Site profile - lots of activity but few artifacts

Flecks of charcoal and red ochre on a living surface

Base of a bayonet (hunting lance)