Some artifacts from the Karluk dig

 

An ulu with the distinctive 'notched' half that we found on most of the ulus

The 2023 Karluk Lake excavation was very successful.  And a great big thank you to Koniag Inc., the landowner, for funding and supporting the research.  In 2023 we excavated a complete 3000 year old house, found a number of very cool artifacts and even charred woven grass matting, and we got a good snapshot of what Alutiiq people were doing up at the lake 3000 years ago - best of all it is not what we expected!

We had discovered and tested the site way back in 2009.  After the 2009 survey we had radiocarbon dated a sample from the 'floor' of one of the structures so we knew that at least one of the depressions dated to around 3,000 years ago.  Based on our 2009 site map and the radiocarbon date we figured we had an 'Early Kachemak Tradition' village up on Karluk Lake.  We also knew that the site had not been disturbed all that much by subsequent people living at the site.  Most 3000 year old sites have more recent sites built on top of them, and this often makes it very difficult to figure things out.

So the plan for 2023 was to excavated the structure we tested back in 2009 and to open up a large area of the site and also find out what was going on outside the structures.  We wanted to dig as much of the '3000 year-old village' as we could.  Are the depressions visible on the surface houses, processing features or just dirt quarries?  What time of year were people up there and what were they doing?  These are just some of the questions we had before we even started to dig.  To be honest I simply expected to find a tiny late summer 'fish camp' house and some fishing and processing paraphernalia - maybe uncover some smoke processing features like what we had found at the outlet to Buskin Lake from a similarly aged site.

What we found was a HUGE and very well built house that had burned down (I will present all the house data in a separate post).  We also did find fishing paraphernalia - lots of net sinkers used to hold the edges of nets down in the water and ulus used has as knives to split and process fish.  We also found flensing knives, chipped points, ground stone points, and wood working tools like adzes. All of the tools were stylistically very similar - it looks like Alutiiq people lived at the site for maybe 100 years or so 3000 years ago, and that subsequent people did not re visit and use the locality (and leave behind stylistically different tools). Basically, we found a far more substantial presence at the lake than I had expected.  This was not a simple fish camp up by the lake.  

More to come on the huge house, and on the woven grass matting that we found charred on the floor in subsequent blog posts.

Patrick

pendant made of canel coal from the Alaska Peninsula

base of a basalt chipped point

Another of the ulus with the distinctive notched haft

Ground slate point

beach worn chipped stone point - probably brought up to the site with beach gravels from the lake

All of the netsinkers had this distinctive 'rod-like' shape - net sinkers were used to hold the bottoms of nets down

Another ground point made of meta tuff or silicified slate

Charred grass basketry - I plan on doing a whole other post on this discovery!