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| A circa 1000-year-old incised slate lance |
Our remote archaeological excavation at Santa Flavia Bay was quite successful. In 2 weeks we excavated 37 1-meter-square units at 3 different sites or around 18 cubic meters of dirt. That's a lot of dirt to move with buckets and trowels. We excavated portions of 2 different houses and found at least 6 different components (time periods people lived there) at the 3 different sites. We found evidence for people living in the area (from youngest to oldest) in a house from the early Russian period, another house from the Transitional Kachemak era (around 1000 years ago), a Kachemak smoke processing feature (circa 2000 years ago), a large Ocean Bay II smoke processing feature (around 4500 years ago), a portion of an Ocean Bay II structure (around 5000 years ago), and finally an early Ocean Bay processing site of some sort (6-7000 years old). And those are just the major components - Basically we found every era of Alutiiq history represented. Put another way - Alutiiq people have always lived at the head of the bay. And even today while we were there excavating at the sites we saw Alutiiq fishing boats anchored up just off shore.
And that's just the sites we found. We also found evidence for much older sites that had been destroyed by erosion in the distant past. At all the sites the occupants brought beach gravel up to the sites for the floors of their features and to help with cooking and banking their fires. And in this gravel they often inadvertently included much older artifacts that had eroded out of different nearby sites. The clearest example was a retouched blade made out of metatuff. This sort of tool is generally only found in sites older than about 7000 years. And yet I found it in a 2000 year old smoke processing feature. This tells me that 2000 years ago nearby to the site there was a 7000 thousand year old site that was eroding onto the beach.
Another example was a number of brightly colored, beach worn, chipped stone tools found in the gravel roof of a 1000 year old house. The tools had been brought up from the beach within the gravel used to cover and insulate the house roof.
Only one of the sites is eroding into the sea today, but it is clear that there have been repeated episodes of erosion in the area. Clearly a lot has been lost to erosion, and we only excavated at the sites that have survived. And many of these sites are far from the active beach today.
We also found layers of blown sand in the top layers of the site nearest the beach. Clearly when the beach is stable and the shoreline is not eroding (at the end of tectonic uplift cycle) the beach is sandy and blows back off the beach and buries the sites. Under the Russian Era house we were shocked to find older sites deposits extending 2 meters down into the ground. Based on the current erosion face we had expected that the house was built on sterile beach deposits. But no, the sterile beach deposits capped far older deposits.
All of this helps us interpret our survey data. When we survey nearby bays we now KNOW that we are probably missing some older sites far from the current beach. We also KNOW that many of the most recent villages are built on far older sites that are not apparent at all on the surface or in the current erosion faces.
Patrick
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| Our deep hole - top is an early Russian Period house while at the bottom is a circa 4500 year old smoke processing feature |
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| historic bead cache |
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| slate end blades from the early Russian period house |
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| Historic ceramics - probably from China |
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| Possible Norton pottery from deeper in the site |
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| Salmon and cod bones from the Early Russian period midden |
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| Slate lance from the circa 4500 year old smoke processing feature |
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| A nest of 'dinosaur' eggs - rocks heated and capped with dirt to prolong and conserve wood while smoke processing meat |
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| A chipped stone side blade - the predecessor of the ground slate ulu |
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| ground slate flensing knife - probably used to butcher sea mammals |
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| Plan view of the early Russian period multi-room house |
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| circa 1000 year old cluster house excavation - this house foundation was dug into beach gravel and the roof was capped with gravel (made for a difficult excavation) |
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| Map of the excavated portion of the cluster house |
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| Molly at one of the KOD-1452 excavation blocks - Ocean Bay I deposits at the bottom |
