A Smaller Pack: Tugidak Survey

Monday, May 1, 2023

Tugidak Survey

Our main base camp

I recently got back from the season's first archaeological survey. My co-worker Molly and I spent 6 days looking for sites on Tugidak Island. Tugidak is a very remote place off the south end of Kodiak Island. It is a fairly flat, wind-swept island. It also has a very dynamic shoreline. Parts of the island are severely eroding (on the order of a mile every 100 years or so) while other parts of the island are growing at the same rate. The northeast side of the island is a series parallel beach ridges that go on for miles and miles. And part of the survey was figuring out where the shoreline was at various moments in time. Normally on a Kodiak survey I can predict fairly accurately where I will find sites, but not so on Tugidak! We had to walk everywhere. We did figure out that the last 2 outer beach ridges on the northeast side of the island probably formed in the last 200 years, and so we focused on looking for sites on the ridges further inland.

So we camped and hiked for miles and miles looking for sites. We had a base camp on the northeast corner of the island and carried a camp with us for a night down at the other end of the beach ridge complex. Lots of time in the teepees by the wood stove. The survey was funded by the BIA and our main task was to find archaeological sites, describe and map them, and assess their condition - are they eroding or are animals digging into them?

The wildlife was remarkable and there was also some pretty good beach combing. It even snowed. I'll post more on the various other aspects of the survey in later posts. But suffice it to say it was a remarkably successful survey. By my rough count we found 31 new archaeological sites, and documented another 7 or so sites that had already been known.

Patrick