So far it has been pretty busy with Tony here. He’d picked out a number of possible samples in advance, and we’ve been finding them. I’ve also been going through the column samples we took last year at Walakpa, and finding contexts that have 2-3 datable samples of both land and marine animal bone. That way, there will be multiple terrestrial dates to give us both a date on the level and information to use to develop correction factors for marine mammal bones. Marine mammal bones tend to give radiocarbon dates that are too old, but sometimes they are the only thing available to date. People generally don’t run dates in those circumstances, but if there were decent correction factors available it would be possible.
We went over to the Inupiat Heritage Center this morning to look at the material they have from Utkiagvik. It looks like there is enough for a whole project there, although the location of the 1981 field notes was unknown for the moment. Some of the staff came out to the lab later and looked at a couple of sewn objects. The mystery one is made out of gut which has been stitched to form a sort of pointed tube, although it is pretty crumpled up. If we get a conservator to visit, it would be great if they were able to rehydrate it a bit and straighten it out.
Tomorrow we are going to be going through boxes of faunal material from Pingusugruk to find suitable samples. There are hundreds of boxes, so Tony is trying to select some contexts to pull, and then I have to ID appropriate bones. I am really hoping that the intern shows up for work.
On the Walakpa front, I’ve been talking with the UIC Science logistics folks, working on how to handle temporary housing for those transiting in and out of the field, and starting to work on travel arrangements.
Out of Ice and Time 