I was traveling the last couple weeks to the Alaska Anthropological Association conference in Seattle, and then stopping in Anchorage on the way home to help my daughter get settled there. The conference and the session went well. I’ll try to put something up on the highlights, when I get a little more free time. I’ve still got papers and also homework for an on-line class I’m taking.
Yesterday, we got back to going through the Ipiutak floor material from the summer and the fall salvage excavation. Trace Hudson, Jacob Harris & Frieda Kaleak all came in, along with Laura Thomas, and we got going on the screening, floating and picking over the heavy and light fractions.
It’s a slow process, but a couple of things were found yesterday that may be interesting. A couple of very small fragments of rock crystal (probably clear quartz) showed up. This is interesting because of some of the properties of quartz crystals and the finds of larger quartz crystals at some Ipiutak sites.
We got so into that process that we didn’t actually get much straightening up done. I’ll have to do that later this week, since some visitors are being brought to the lab on a tour late in the week, and it’s a bit messy there now :-(.
Out of Ice and Time 
Hi
There was a 2006 project to recover the Ipiatuk artefacts that went to the bottom of the ocean in the 1940’s. I understand from the University of Fairbanks that it never went ahead.
When you talk about the ‘fall salvage operation’ does tha relate to the main cache of artefacts that sunk, or is this a different matter? Thanks
tony brown
No, that has nothing to do with the artifacts from Ipiutak (the site) which were lost at sea. The “fall salvage operation” was the salvage of the Ipiutak (the culture) house at the Nuvuk site that took place in September.