Now that the storms have passed for the moment, and I can once again get to the office, I’ve actually gotten a few things done. I managed to take the few comments on the mission statements for the GHEA working groups and finalize them. That done, I set up, not one, but two (!), working groups. The first is focused on coastal erosion, and the second on global change effects on the archaeological and paleoecological records. They are now open for members (a few have already joined).
Monday’s time-sheet approvals were particularly onerous, because a change of user ID in the time-sheet system didn’t work quite right, and not only detached users from approvers until they logged in again on Monday, it also rescinded submitted and approved time-sheets from last week which were done before the update! Much confusion and a royal pain for us and for the IT/accounting folks, I can assure you. But we persevered and everyone should get paid on time! There were a few other accounting and proposal related details to deal with today, but they’re pretty well in hand, and I just need a few more numbers to get the proposal out the door.
That done, I moved on to drafting a summary for newsletters (several paragraphs) of the Polar Archaeological Network meeting in Tromsø, which somewhat coincidentally (since I am the only overlap between the two groups at the moment) was all about global change and threats to the Polar archaeological and paleoecological records. That’s been circulated and I’ve made several revisions based on comments. I’ve gotten one more set from Maribeth Murray at UAF, which actually suggests two versions, one for social science audiences and one speaking more to the paleoecology/global change folks, so I should have that ready for final circulation to the attendees tomorrow, and then it should be ready to go to out. Maribeth and I (and the other meeting attendees) are also doing a poster at the Alaska Anthropological Association annual meeting in Fairbanks next week. PAN had a preliminary poster, which I am majorly rewriting and putting Alaska-specific images on (since this version is for an Alaska meeting). I’ve got to get that finished, circulated, and down to Maribeth in Fairbanks so she can get it printed up (since large-format printers are almost as scarce as hen’s teeth in Barrow).
Also needing finishing and polishing is my paper/PowerPoint for the meeting. I am in a session in honor of Ernest S. “Tiger” Burch Jr., one of the most renowned ethnologists who ever worked in the North, who passed away unexpectedly last September. He was a brilliant and meticulous researcher, widely admired among Iñupiaq people, particularly those of Kivalina, where he and his wife lived for some time, and an all-around good person. I was proud to have him as a friend, as was my husband, Glenn Sheehan, and it’s an honor to be asked to be in this session.
I had somehow lost track of when the meeting was, and had rather a jolt today when I opened an email about a side meeting, which mentioned the attached agenda for next week’s meeting! A mad dash to make travel plans ensued, so I now have a room, a car, a plane ticket and am registered for the meeting. All told–1.5 hours. Practice makes perfect (or at least faster).
I’m in the Anchorage airport waiting for a plane to fly back to Barrow. I’m coming back from a very interesting meeting in Tromsø, Norway, dealing with threats to the Polar archaeological heritage. More on that later.
I stopped in Anchorage for the weekend to check out a friend’s library for some literature on the NW Arctic and Seward Peninsula for an article I am writing. Found a bunch of good stuff, which he’ll drop off at a copy shop that does a lot of work for lawyers. Way cheaper than Kinko’s, and they can make PDFs, so we’ll both end up with electronic copies, which are pretty nice for the field.
At last! After a fine lunch, we reassembled in Dalton for the afternoon session. We moved from Alaska to the North Atlantic, and a variety of Norse sites. Tom McGovern kicked it off with an overview of what had been accomplished during the most recent IPY. Much of this is due to the work of various NABO members. He talked about some really neat school outreach programs, including one issuing GPS and camera to students & teachers to record archaeology and in the case of Iceland, place names. He also highlighted a very interesting initiative to develop
Konrad Smiarowski talked about zooarchaeology associated with the Vatnahverfi Project, part of the Norse Eastern Settlement, Greenland. The project involved survey and excavation (following NABO common protocols, which make for great inter-site inter-comparability). He was looking at how the Norse immigrants adapted to a new environment with new (to them) resources. He had evidence for the adoption of seal hunting, which the Norse seem not to have done elsewhere, despite the presence of seals, as well as hunting of walrus for ivory and birding. Bones of harp and hooded seals, both of which are migratory, show up even at more inland sites, so it looks like either people are coming to the outer coast to hunt or the seals are being traded inland. It looks like they were net or drive hunting. Things seem to have been going on well, but increasing amounts of ice seem to have changed things, driving people to intensify sealing at the same time as it was affecting the local seal populations. Things ended badly, as we know.
Ramona Harrison gave an interesting paper on the farm Gásir and its hinterlands, including various types of landscape (hayfields, pastures, etc). She is working on the zooarchaeology as part of a long-term human eco-dynamics in Eyjafjörður, Northeast Iceland. Unfortunately, my notes on this appear not to have been saved, so I won’t go into more detail, so as not to mis-report anything Ramona said, but it was quite interesting, and reports should be on the NABO website soon, if they’re not there now.
The final paper was given by Seth Brewington on work in the Faroes, particularly at Undir Junkarinsflotti. It was abandoned in the 1300s due to repeated sand blows, which were a problem at that time in a number of places on the eastern side of the North Atlantic. The paper dealt with the zooarchaeology, which is quite unique as bone preservation generally seems to be bad in the Faroes, and the idea of keeping bone is still relatively new. The inhabitants seem to have been eating lots of birds (mostly puffins), even in comparison to other Norse sites, where the bird consumption seems to drop after the earliest settlement period.
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.
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.
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.
Bill also brought out THE original Clovis Points. It was really fun to see them “in person” as it were.
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.
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.
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.
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:-).
Out of Ice and Time 