Category: Archaeology

18th Arctic conference–Part 4 (Day 2-AM)

This penultimate chapter is a bit belated, to say the least, due to holidays, much travel and associated presentations, and proposal preparation.  However, there were some very interesting papers on the final day as well, and I decided I needed to get this written before yet another conference happened.  And I needed a break from final tweaking of the PowerPoint for said conference.

The first paper was by Molly Odell, on economic change at  Mitksqaaq Angayuk between 3400-100BP.  The site, on Kodiak, seems to have had discontinuous occupations from Early Katchemak to the Russian occupation.  Molly focused on the fauna from a midden associated with an Alutiiq house.  The house seemed to have been occupied primarily by men, based on the artifacts.  The midden showed a change from a pre-contact mixed fishery (primarily cod but with significant amounts of salmon and small amounts of other locally available fish) to a fishery focused almost entirely on cod in the historic period.  Molly interprets this as a shift from a winter settlement to a cod-fishing camp, presumably staffed by men.

Jennifer Raff gave a paper on mitochondrial aDNA (ancient DNA) from the Lower Alaska Peninsula & Eastern Aleutians.  This is interesting, as there are disagreements about how/when various cultures in that area appeared, and whether or not they represent in situ (in place) developments or population replacements.  This work may help settle some of those questions.  Not to spoil any surprises, as this paper is being published, but both haplotypes A & D are well represented, and there is B from one site!

Rick Knecht, a fellow Bryn Mawr College PhD, gave a “just out of the field” talk about excavations at Nunalleq, a Yup’ik site in the Yukon-Kuskokwim delta.  The Yup’ik culture is quite well-known ethnographically, but almost no archaeology has been done in the area.  Nunalleq, for which there is a date of 1300BP (not sure if that’s calibrated or what it’s on or associated with) has extraordinary organic preservation at the moment, but is suffering erosion, which is accelerating due to permafrost melting and sea level rise.  The local community actually contacted the archaeologists in concern.  The 2010 season excavated a house, with lots of organic artifacts (rye grass matting, for example) present on the floor.  They think it might have been a men’s house, which are known for the Yup’ik from the ethnographic record, based on the low numbers of women’s artifacts recovered.  There was a burnt side room, with a large number of arrowheads present, which is possibly a result of conflict.  More work is planned.

Chistyann Darwent followed with a report on the 2010 work at Cape Espenberg, a beach ridge complex which is located near Kotzebue in the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve.  This project has been doing survey there for a couple of years and has surveyed and mapped extensively, especially the more recent periods.  They have actually been able to excavate several houses (one on each of the 3 Thule-age ridges) to a considerable extent.  One thing they discovered was that the surface mapping did not necessarily give a good picture of what was under the ground in terms of houses, side rooms and so forth.  One of the houses seems to have burned, although why is not yet clear.  They excavated an outdoor ceramic manufacturing area (inadvertently–it looked like part of the house from the surface).  The houses on the oldest and middle Thule ridges had Thule 2 harpoon heads associated with them, suggesting that they were fairly early.  The also found a copper eyed needle, slat armor.  The tunnel floor was lined with baleen.  The youngest house was of a type that was familiar to the project’s elder consultant, who had been in the US Army during the Korean War, since he’d grown up in a similar house.  It had lots of evidence for fishing.  The dates were a bit later than prior testing had led them to expect, the oldest around 1260-1400BP, the middle 1450-1650BP.

Justin Tackney gave a paper on mDNA (mitochondrial DNA) from Nuvuk, as well as presenting the new direct dates that Joan Coltrane has for the human remains. The results show a number of haplogroups hypothesized to be founders to modern Inuit populations all in one area, which is new.  In general, this supports a Thule expansion from North Alaska.

I got the slot before lunch, and gave a paper looking at the material culture of modern Iñupiat whaling.  I am using this as a way to approach what sort of evidence might be expected in archaeological sites of whalers, and where that evidence might be found.  Essentially, the modern case has a number of artifacts that are needed for whaling and nothing else, most of which have pre-contact equivalents.  The interesting thing is that they are generally not stored in the house, which implies that excavations focused on houses may not be able to address presence/absence whaling too well.

Exhibition Features Objects Collected by Arctic Anthropologist Frederica de Laguna | Bryn Mawr Now

Exhibition Features Objects Collected by Arctic Anthropologist Frederica de Laguna | Bryn Mawr Now.

Papers and articles and PowerPoints, oh my…

Despite the fact that I am still in New York on vacation (except for things like on-line payroll and P-card reviewing and approving, which can’t wait), I’m taking a bit a of a break from reading mysteries and eating Christmas goodies to work on several things I have in progress.  I’m not going to be able to finish any of them, since I don’t have any books here for checking references, and most of the images I want to use are in the Aperture vault  on my computer back in Barrow.  However, I can do outlines, and get a fair bit of the text drafted before I get home, at least for some of them.

In order they are: 1) PowerPoint & accompanying paper on Iñupiat and Cold War Science for a conference in Munich, 2) encyclopedia article on Western Thule 1300-1750AD in North & Northwest Alaska (in 7000 words maximum!), 3)PowerPoint on Alaskan archaeological sites and threats to them from climate change as it has been observed to be occurring for a conference in Tromsø, Norway, 4) article I’m working on with Claire Alix and Owen Mason on Ipiutak at Nuvuk, 5)  encyclopedia article on Barrow sites (Nuvuk, Birnirk and Utqiagvik), 6) paper on ethnographic data on storage of whaling gear, and 7) a paper on whaling gear recovered from archaeological sites which are known to have had whaling taking place.

These all have places they are to go, and times they need to be there.  Nothing concentrates the mind like deadlines, except perhaps the threat of execution…

18th Arctic Conference Part 3-Visit to the University Museum

In the afternoon we took a bus in to the University Museum at Penn for a look at the collections.  William Wierzbowski, Associate Keeper of the American Section, has set things up for the visit.  He had gotten a number of items that had been collected by the late Frederica de Laguna, (BMC ’27: founder of the Bryn Mawr College Anthropology Department) in Alaska out and had arranged them as a temporary “ancestor shrine” for us.

Frederica de Laguna "ancestor shrine" with a number of conference attendees. Rick Davis of Bryn Mawr, who was the host, is in the blue sweater at photo center.

It included maps drawn by Freddy, and fragments of Raven’s Tail weaving, a style which had fallen out of use and was recovered from archaeological fragments like these and a few remaining ethnographic samples.

Hand-drawn map of site location.
Fragment of Raven's Tail weaving.

Bill also brought out THE original Clovis Points.  It was really fun to see them “in person” as it were.

Attendees photograph the Clovis points.
Clovis Point with original catalog card.
Close-up of Clovis point.
Close-up of Clovis point.

18th Arctic Conference–Part 2 (Day 1).

Here’s part one on the long-delayed wrap-up of the  18th Arctic Conference.  There were a number of quite interesting papers, as is usually the case.  Since most of this stuff is not yet fully published, it seems worthwhile to put a little update up here.  If anything here sounds interesting, contact the authors.

The first day was mostly earlier material, from Northwest Alaska and the Alaska Range around Denali National Park.  Jeff Rasic gave a paper (coauthored with Bill Hedeman, Ian Buvit and Steve Keuhn) about the Raven’s Bluff site.  This site, about 100 miles north of Kotzebue, not only has fluted points and microblades, but it has a unit (Unit 1) with well-preserved old faunal remains! The 2009 and 2010 work has looked at soils, and there is clearly intact stratigraphy there.  There is an upper ASTt (Arctic Small Tool tradition) component with a date of 2150±40BP, separated from the late Pleistocene materials with a fairly thick sterile layer.  There are 10 C14 dates so far, 9800±60 BP and 10720±50, on the lower component.  Very cool!

John Blong gave a paper on the summer’s work surveying in the uplands of the central Alaska Range, specifically the upper Savage River drainage (Denali NP) and the upper Susitna drainage.  They also found some really old animal bones together with flakes (C14 dates around 10000BP), and excavated at Ewe Creek, where they got cultural material dating to 4500 BP.

Katie Krasinski gave a paper she had done with Gary Haynes on taphonomic analysis of Proboscidean remains.  They had been able to work with fresh African elephant bones and Alaskan mammoth remains to look at how impacts by hammerstones, percussion flaking (this sort of bone can be flaked, as can whalebone) and carnivore chewing modify the bone.  This is important, as groupings of non-intact mammoth (and mastodon in some areas) are often found.  If there are lots of stone tools around, it’s fairly easy to figure out that people butchered them, even if they didn’t kill them in the first place, but otherwise, it’s a lot harder.  This research is aimed at getting data to help figure that out when sites like that are found.  They did gather a fair bit of data.  Biggest surprise: a higher percentage of the animal-gnawed bones had spiral fractures than did the human-modified one.

Brian Wygal talked about survey in Denali NPP.  There has been a several year project to try to get a handle on the prehistory of the park, finishing in 2009.  The talk was a preliminary wrap-up of the project.  He noted that they found the most sites the years they surveyed the fewest acres.  This really points out a problem in Alaska, where the place is so huge and so little has been done.  From the survey results, it also appears that the variations in tool kits which people have been wondering about are more related to seasonal movements and conditions, with microblades (and composite tools in general) perhaps being preferable in colder and snowy conditions.

Heather Smith gave paper on the excavations at the Serpentine Hot Springs site on the Seward Peninsula somewhat north of Nome.  Prior work had found fluted point bases, and 2009 work had located a hearth which yielded a C14 date of around 11,200-11,400BP.  Last summer’s work found more hearth features, which contained a lot of burnt bones and other organics.  Dating is underway.

Lunch was in the Dorothy Vernon Room, a rather interesting room in the modern Louis Kahn dormitory Haffner Hall which includes much of the original Dorothy Vernon Room from the old Deanery.  The afternoon was taken up by a visit to the collections at the University Museum at the University of Pennsylvania.

18th Arctic Conference–Part 1 (the scenic view of Bryn Mawr College).

I’m back from the 18th Arctic Conference in Bryn Mawr.  It was really busy, and the Wi-Fi at Wyndham, where I was staying and had downtime, was amazingly slow, so I didn’t try posting from there.  I’m pretty busy, since I’m only here for a week before we go on a family vacation in Hawaii, so I’m going to break this into small chunks.

We were really lucky to have great weather the whole time.  Apparently the weather has been rather awful this fall in SE Pennsylvania, but last weekend it was perfect.  Bluebird days, still some leaves on the trees, not too hot or muggy.  The campus looked lovely.

 

Taylor Hall, first building built at Bryn Mawr College, from Thomas Library steps.
Thomas Library

I went inside Thomas, which was the original College library.  It is a bit Hogwarts looking, I suppose.  There used to be a free coffee hour every day in Thomas Great Hall, where just about everyone on campus showed up.  It was very handy.

Thomas Great Hall (apparently set up for some sort of event)
Athena (actually a replica because the original was kidnapped and damaged) surrounded by offerings, holding what appears to be invitations to Lantern Night teas.
Cloisters of Thomas Library.
Back of Thomas Great Hall from the Cloisters.
Dalton Hall. The "lantern" was a recent addition to hold a staircase that met modern code.

Dalton Hall is where the meeting was held.  It is the home of the Anthropology Department, and other social sciences.  Dalton was built in 1892 as the first science laboratory dedicated to academics.  It underwent a major rehab, which came out really well.  The old building had central stairs, which weren’t up to code, so the “lantern” got stuck on to put the new stairs in.  The labs and lecture spaces are just great, way nicer than when I was doing my AB and my PhD coursework there.

 

Finally starting to catch up

I’ve been insanely busy for the last several weeks.  I do now have a temporary admin assistant, Melinda Nayakik, who has been filing up a storm, which has been really helpful to get a handle on the office situation.  Fortunately, Susie Stine, who has tons of accounting experience and has filled in on UIC Science’s accounting side before also became available.  She’s helping Melinda learn the 2 (!) accounting systems and the paper-flow routines.  Susie has also been really  helpful as we work through moving billing to the main accounting folks.  A good thing, too, since I’ve had the first round of corporate budgets and two CRM reports to take care of.

The budget is in the hands of the higher-ups until the next round, although there are a mass of questions flying back and forth as usual.  One of the CRM reports is just waiting for a nicer background for the main map of this season’s work, assuming it is forthcoming soon, and the other has a couple of references that need to be added.

Other than that, the main thing that is urgent is the presentation for the 18th Arctic Conference in Bryn Mawr.  I leave Tuesday night (since it takes a couple of days to get anywhere that is not in Alaska), so it has to be more or less done by then.  I’ve got an outline, but I need to talk to a couple of whaling captain couples to make sure everything is correct, and I’d like some more pictures of current gear.  I was going to work on this today, and maybe go visit some folks, but I somehow wound up with a stomach bug & couldn’t go out.

I’ve been working on the travel for the Christmas holidays (in upstate NY) and one of the two conferences I’m going to early next year.  My husband & I are both giving papers at a conference in Munich in late January.  He’s going to a meeting at Abisko in Sweden in mid-January, and they’re willing to have me come too, so we’re trying to arrange it as one trip.  Less travel time, and it’ll keep the costs reasonable, I hope.  The organizers are reimbursing a good bit of it, but still, no point going crazy.  I’ve got to go to Tromsø in mid-February, so that travel needs to be figured out next.

Glenn & I may be the only folks at these meetings who actually think there’s a lot of daylight.  Nothing like meeting in the far North in the dead of winter:-).

Streaming URL update

OK, this is the fixed URL for streamed Saturday Schoolyard talks:  http://www.alaska.edu/oit/cts/streaming/BARC/

It should work whenever they are being streamed.

We’ll be on around 1:30 AKDT today.  No Heather, since she fell on the ice we’ve got covering everything here (they even canceled the evening plane due to an icy runway) and hurt her ankle, so she’s laid up.

Nuvuk Project at Saturday Schoolyard!

I’ve mentioned the Saturday Schoolyard series of talks presented by the Barrow Arctic Science Consortium before.  Tomorrow it’s the Nuvuk Archaeological Project’s turn!  Heather Hopson and Trace Hudson, two of the students working on the project and I are going to be giving the presentation.

If you’re in Barrow, there’s a van leaving the library about 1:15 or so, or you can drive yourself to the BARC at NARL.  The talk starts about 1:30.

If you’re not in Barrow, it will be streamed, technology spirits permitting, starting around 1:30 PM AKDT.  The feed will probably start earlier.  I’ll try to post the URL, but it should be the same as in an earlier post.  They are now archiving the Schoolyard talks as well, and they can be found in iTunes U.