I haven’t been posting much on here recently. A bunch of things have been going on, and I will try to catch up, but the thing is that my spine , which I had fused in 1996, has been giving me trouble. I broke one of the screws (how I have no idea) and it is moving around poking nerves, plus there seem to be problems one more vertebra up. It has been fairly wearing and something had to give (like this blog & hobbies).
The upshot is that I need to get it re-fused. So I am off to Mesa, AZ to get that done. Glenn is able come along, so at least I won’t have to spend Christmas all alone. Now if only Alaska Airlines doesn’t wind up delaying things so long I miss my connections…
… can be a bit overpowering. I chose one of the bags of frozen samples from Utiqiaġvik to thaw out for the lab tour after the Saturday Schoolyard talk.
The talk went well, with a very large turn out. Afterwards, a fair number of them came by the lab for a tour. And then I opened the bag. It was from Mound 8, and was described as containing fish bones and perhaps artifacts embedded in seal oil.
Provenience tag from the bag.
It was rather smelly to say the least. The oil made up most of the matrix, with a consistency like cold greasy peanut butter. Not only that, the most obvious contents were wood chips and hair, which weren’t too exciting. Most folks didn’t feel like hanging around too long. Since it was my birthday & there was a party at my house, I didn’t finish the bag.
Today I got back to work on it for an hour or so. It still smelled, I guess, but I think the smell of old seal oil is sort of nice. It’s the smell of archaeological sites, and they are places I like to be. The couple of extra days had let the oil warm up and it was a little easier to work with.
Contents of the bag.
I found a number of interesting things, including a fish vertebra, some fish scales, a number of hairs, some bone fragments, and of course, wood chips. When I was labeling the bags, I realized it had been excavated by none other than Kevin Smith, now at the Haffenreffer, exactly 32 years and 3 months ago.
I made it back from DC on Thursday night. Friday was the usual scramble after being out of town. Saturday night was the annual meeting of the Friends of the Library. There was a business meeting, and a potluck dinner. But the highlight of the meeting was the guest speaker, none other than Daniel Inulak Lum, author of the book Nuvuk, the Northernmost: Altered Land, Altered Lives in Barrow, Alaska.
Dan Lum showing slides of the photos in his book
Dan’s family is Nuvukmiut (that’s how it is spelled in Nuvuk dialect–it would be Nuvugmiut in Barrow dialect), originally from Nuvuk. He ran a tour company which took tourists to Nuvuk for much of the time the Nuvuk Archaeological Project was active. While doing that, he wound up taking a whole lot of pictures. He has some really great animal photos, particularly of bears, as well as some really beautiful landscapes shots. His family had to move to Fairbanks for a while for reasons connected to health of a family member, so he isn’t running the tour company any more, but it gave him an opportunity to look through his pictures and he wound up writing a book about Nuvuk and life in Barrow.
When he was running the tour company, Dan gave great tours. He really wanted to pass on accurate information to his clients, and would stop at our excavations and talk to us, so he had the latest news. As he said in his talk, the village is no longer there (due to erosion) so all the Nuvukmiut have to remember it by is information from oral history and archaeology. He’d always check to see if it was OK to bring the tourists over (not if we were excavating human remains), and was always willing to bring things back and forth for us in his van. When the Ipiutak sled runners were uncovered, Dan stood by until we had them out of the ground around 2AM (despite having had tours all day) and then drove them very slowly back to the lab at NARL, making sure that they weren’t bounced around. It took over an hour to go the five or so miles. He also brought pop out for the crew on warm days.
Dan showed slides of many of the photos from the book, and talked about how he came to write a book in the first place. He was very encouraging to audience members about writing and publishing their own books.
For some reason, this year there has been quite a bit of media interest in Barrow and archaeology. To begin with, there were several film crews in Barrow while we were working at Walakpa, two of which actually came out to the site and filmed as well as filming in the lab. Only one of them has anything out yet. PBS filmed for several both in the field and in the lab, and a little bit of it made it into this piece, and a shot in the slideshow that they put up on the web in conjunction with the series on sea ice change. It was a very buggy day in the field, and it was quite the challenge not to be swatting mosquitoes all the time.
Oh, and the buoy experiment that Ignatius Rigor is working on in the film clip is supported by UIC Science staff (not that they have to do much, the idea is to see how the buoys do with no servicing). Their data can be compared to data from ARM’s established serviced meteorological instruments. That way, when scientists get buoy data, they have an idea how reliable it is, and if there are any special considerations in interpretation (becoming uncalibrated over time, etc.)
We’ve also gotten interest from the press. Abra Stolte-Patkotak, one of our volunteers writes for the Arctic Sounder, and did a piece on the Walakpa excavations, which is on-line here. For some reason, they don’t have the picture that was published up on-line, but I will ask Abra if I can put it up here & add it if so.
I am currently working with a free-lancer who has interviewed me and asked me to fact check the article before he goes further. A very good idea, as many years ago I was interviewed by a reporter who mis-heard my answer to the question of how far back in time human occupation of the Barrow area was archaeologically demonstrated to extend. I said “maybe 4 to 5 thousand years” which was what people thought reasonable for Denbigh at the time. He refused fact-checking help, and published an article in which I was directly quoted as saying “45,000 years”. Although Glenn & I could never get the Arctic Sounder to mail our subscription to us in Pennsylvania, apparently Tiger Burch could. I got a very puzzled email from him after the article came out, in which I believe he was politely trying to ask me if I’d lost my mind. Fortunately, he had enough experience with the press that he believed the explanation.
Things got rather busy around here, since I hadn’t actually been planning to be in the field, and had several other things going at work that required some time and attention. Combined with rather chilly weather and a commute that did my no-longer-fused spine no favors, I wound up putting sleep ahead of updating the blog. Now that the fieldwork is done & I’m getting everything else caught up, time for an update on what happened before the season ended.
We managed to get quite a bit accomplished before the weather stopped us. Fortunately, the entrances to the lagoons closed up, and we generally had less trouble getting to the site in September, thank goodness! In the end, we had just hit frozen ground at the back corner of the excavation when everything started freezing up. This is good, since that means everything behind/below that should still be in great shape if erosion doesn’t get to it before we can. We actually had some really lovely days. And enough wind so no bugs!
Lagoon and tent on a nice day, as seen from the excavation.
The floor that we had encountered in the south end of the trench cleaned up nicely. There had been a pot in the corner, but all that was left was a pile of smashed sherds. The digging of the pit that someone had put in above it had probably smashed what was left. Near where the arrow shafts were found was an area of floor so soaked with marine mammal oil that you could actually wipe it off of one patch of floor. It seems most likely that this was a tent floor, since there was no evidence of structure otherwise, and it was not far enough below the surface for a semi-subterranean house.
Probable tent floor after cleaning. Pot was located in the lower left corner, left of the stick. The oil patch surrounds the North arrow.
The house (at least I think it was a house) proved very complex. The small area we were able to open was not big enough to let me see what was going on well enough to be definite. However, there seem to have been several floors. We were not able to get down to them before freeze up, but we determined that there were several layers of midden (trash deposit) on them, so it would appear that the house must have been abandoned and reused, rather than just rebuilt.
View from the side showing several layers of floor logs above the sill logs & below the green bucket.
At some point in the sequence, it looks like the structure may have had a meat cache pit (sort of the forerunner of today’s ice cellars) in it. There was a distinct line of hardened red marine mammal oil
North edge of the meat pit. Caribou jaw lying along the sloping side just to the left of the North arrow. The red oil layer continued under the plank. The north logs were above the edge of the pit, but there was a layer of midden in between, so they were not associated.Another view of the red oil level underneath some logs (possibly 2 separate floors). Notice the seal scapula used as a chock under the plank on the right.Another view of the red oil layer showing it sloping up to the right. Note that the apparent sill logs for the main structure are below what is visible in the picture.
We got all the way to the bottom of the large post in the northern half of the trench. It turned out to be a later addition, dug into an existing midden, and chocked with a seal sacrum, a walrus vertebra and a broken pick head. There were two smaller (and apparently earlier) posts very close to it, one of which had a deposit of shell next to it. That will be interesting if we can ID any of them.
Post, showing sacrum and vertebra used as chocks.Post with pick used as chock at base to left of North arrow.A view of the excavation before the post and north logs came out. NO, the wall was not curved; this is a raw iPhone panorama shot, & that happens. Our walls are straighter than that!
We had been working as fast as we could on the structures at Walakpa. Given how far north we are, “Winter is coming!” pretty much applies as soon as it starts thawing in spring. We had a fair bit of windy weather, so it wasn’t pleasant working conditions, but the ambient temperature was generally above freezing, so the ground remained soft, and we were able to continue excavation.
The batteries on the transit were not happy, and we pretty much needed to have one charging at all times, or risk shut-down until we could charge a battery. The batteries are a bit old, and need to be re-celled or replaced, but since I hadn’t expected to be excavating this summer, that was scheduled to happen over the coming winter, which left us a bit handicapped.
But then, last Monday, there was a dusting of snow on the ground in the morning, and it didn’t melt. Further south in Alaska, snow on the tops of the mountains is often called “Termination Dust” since its appearance signals the beginning of the end of the summer season. And so it was here.
I had started accumulating materials to protect the site over the weekend. UIC Construction had some surplus damaged materials in their yard which would otherwise have just gone to the dump, and they were kind enough to donate them to the cause. Monday, we started hauling them down to Walakpa.
A dusting of snow on the site & the beach in the morningShards of ice from the tarp after the site was uncovered.
We kept digging, since the ground wasn’t frozen. The next morning, there was a lot more snow on the beach, and the ground was really stiff although we did manage to dig a bit more and screen all but two buckets.
We met a polar bear on the way down to the site. It was tired, resting on the beach, but was so wary that it got up and moved before we could detour around it so it could rest.
More snow on the beach. And a tired polar bear, who was none too happy when we showed up on ATVs.
We put particle board along the erosion face of the site, and gathered sods from the beach to stack up to hold them in place. We also used upright driftwood to help hold this in place. By the end of the day, I concluded that things were freezing to the point where only a pickax would move dirt, which would sort of defeat the purpose of archaeological excavation, so we started hauling gear back to town that night.
We allowed the site to freeze more the next day, and Thursday we went down to put the site to bed & take down the tent.
We put a layer of whiteboard insulation on the top and front of the site, and then covered it with geotextile fabric, fastened in place with spikes. Then we covered that with the original sods which had been saved.
Excavation surface covered by whiteboard.Protecting the site with particle board, geotextile, sod and driftwood.Sod back on the site.
Once we had that taken care of, the gear had to be packed up and the tent taken down. We spray painted the hubs of the Arctic Oven frame so the next folks who set it up will have an easier time of it than we did doing it without instructions.
Tent & fly are packed and Jason Thomas is disassembling the frame.Packing the trailers. Riley Kalayauk brought his trailer down too, so we had 2.Happy hard-working crew ready to head home.
Now all we can do is hope and pray that there are no storms before the ocean freezes up that generate waves big enough to reach the site, and if there are, that they don’t last long enough to destroy the protection that we built. If we are fortunate, it will still be there next year, and we can learn more.
Thursday, we had an even more exciting trip to Walakpa, which really messed up my back, so I was pretty much flat on my back when not actually working. I was going to do a post about that this morning, but when I woke up, there was very sad news. Pepe’s North of the Borderburned to the ground last night.
All that’s left of Pepe’sThe remainsTop of the World Hotel in the backgroundBurned beamsThe bank building almost caught on fire too. Great save NSBFD!
There was some damage to the Top of the World Hotel, including the destruction of the entrance. As you can see, the bank building nearly caught fire as well. It’s charred and a lot of windows are broken, but the North Slope Borough Fire Department managed to save it. Much credit to them.
Fran Tate, who started and owns Pepe’s is quite ill, and in Anchorage for medical treatment. She’s donated a lot to her adopted hometown (free meals for school sports teams, food for bereaved families, fund-raising for children’s hospitals, just for starters) and here’s hoping some way can be found to help resurrect Pepe’s. We are going to be hurting for restaurant seats and catering here in Barrow if not.
It was a very windy morning, so much so that we started out by securing the tent even more, since it was actually working enough that one of the anchor logs had rolled off! We owe someone some parachute cord, but we’ve got a bunch of rock dead-men in now.
The rest of the morning went to screening, and after lunch the wind had dropped enough that we could start excavating. We finally are down far enough that the structure is starting to emerge. So far we have what appear to be two walls made of horizontal log, parallel to each other, both of which appear to have toppled to the north.
Part of North log wall.Part of South log wall
I actually took both of the pictures above with my iPad Mini, which then allows me to move them into iAnnotate PDF and draw on them & add voice notes (easy on the carpal tunnel, that).
While taking those pictures, all of a sudden several of the crew were looking at my foot in some dismay! I looked down, expecting to see blood or something (it didn’t hurt, but with the broken screw in my back that isn’t a good guide), but fortunately it was just this guy.
The erosion and slumping at Walakpa had left a large overhanging of sod, which was putting a lot of weight on the exposed house structure. The weight had already caused a crack in the sod on the surface up on the top of the site, and I was pretty worried that the whole thing could fall. We wanted to get that overhang cut back flush with the bluff. It was really hard to get to it, and we couldn’t just use shovels to cut the sod off, since there was nowhere to stand that didn’t risk knocking the whole thing down. It was more of an engineering problem than a regular excavation. We trimmed some of it off from below, standing on either side of the house, while others worked from on top.
Early stages of cutting back the overhang
The overhanging sod had seemed pretty thin, but it had apparently lost some soil off the bottom, since it proved to be over 30 cm (about 1 foot) thick when we cut into it. Getting all that heavy wet sod off reduced the weight on the structure
Overhang mostly removed
Once that was taken care of, we moved on to trying to strip the sod from the top of the house back about 1.5 meters (5 feet) from the bluff, so we can begin excavating the house. Trina Brower & I did surface topos of the north half of the mound with the total station, and then we started. We still couldn’t use a shovel along the edge, since the crack went too deep, so we started away from the bluff. We hadn’t gotten very far when some buried Visqueen showed up!
Initial sod cut, with VIsqueen showing at the south end.
Obviously, everything above the Visqueen is quite recent and can just be set aside for re-sodding the site. As far as I can tell from the profile, it is all a redeposited layer, maybe from Dennis Stanford‘s nearby excavations. Anne Garland is trying to excavate the Visqueen out, so we can at least get a surface that was exposed prior to the deposit of the plastic, and maybe figure out if this is an old test unit or something else. My husband Glenn has vague recollections of a group from the Utkiavik Project hiking to Walakpa and backfilling some disturbances they found, and using Visqueen in the process, so this may be from that.
On Friday, we had a cameraman from PBS along. PBS is in Barrow interviewing a number of scientists (and some other folks) for a program they are doing on sea ice retreat. That is part of the reason why sites are eroding so fast up here. They wanted to interview me about the Nuvuk Archaeological Project. They had already planned to go out to the point with another scientist, and since we aren’t digging there this summer (it was supposed to be all lab work), it didn’t seem to be that useful to go again. So we discussed going to Walakpa so they had something to film, and it was also a good example of the issues that arise from sea ice retreat. It was terribly buggy the last few days, which made for some unpleasant working conditions. It was quite difficult not to swat mosquitoes for the entire interview, but apparently I did OK. We had to shoot a bit more in the lab on Saturday, due to changing light in the field (and the fact the producer had caught a stomach bug on the way to Barrow and wasn’t able to leave her room, let alone go to Walakpa). I think I was able to make some points about how retreating sea ice increases coastal erosion and what we lose when that happens. We will see what if anything makes it through the editing.
Even if it was buggy, Walakpa was still pretty.
Walakpa Lagoon looking inland from the site.Looking west at the eroding house from the total station while doing surface topo. Anne Garland in yellow on the bluff edge, and Trina Brower with the stadia rod.
Out of Ice and Time 