When I last posted I had just left for a trip to two conferences in Europe. Since then, I’ve been in 4 countries, given two papers (at EAA 2015 in Glasgow and CHAGS 11 in Vienna), submitted an organized SAA session for next spring, come home, gone to Fairbanks for shotgun qualification, come back home, had two of the WALRUS project participants up here to cut samples from the bones that the interns have been finding in the collections, written part of two reports, drafted two abstracts for a meeting in November, and started on a proposal for an edited volume dealing with climate change & archaeology. I haven’t managed to post at all.
Last week was a tough week for Barrow in many ways, with the deaths of several community members, including long-time mayor Nate Olemaun Jr.. On a brighter note, Barrow took three whales on Friday, and another three today.
I managed to get a couple of videos of the evaluation of things exposed by erosion at Ukkuqsi on Thursday uploaded to YouTube. You can see them here, and here.
Unfortunately, the erosion continued, and additional items were exposed after I left for a trip to two conferences in Europe, possibly including human remains (this is the site where the little frozen girl was found in 1994). The North Slope Borough is taking care of the situation at the moment.
Things have eroded out elsewhere in the Barrow area as well. At one point I was on the phone with someone from the North Slope Borough about one site, when someone else called about something found at another location entirely. And I now have a voicemail about yet another location!
There is a very large storm, with winds up to 50 mph and big waves from the west battering the Chukchi coastline from Barrow south. It has created a major storm surge, with big waves and coastal erosion. An emergency has been declared in Barrow due to flooding and road damage.
I flew back from Wainwright yesterday evening, and even through the storm was just building, the waves were already hitting Walakpa. I couldn’t get pictures but it did not look good.
Today was much worse. Late this afternoon, I got a series of calls about something washing out at Ukkuqsi, where the little frozen girl Aġnaiyaaq was found. Aqamak Okpik from IHLC got things organized, with Morrie Lemen coming out to NARL in a bigger truck than mine to take me in to take a look. The North Slope Borough Fire Department came over, and two firefighters suited up and tied a rope onto me so I could go down and take a look.
View of Ukkuqsi from the north side.
The big concern was that a burial was eroding out, since there have been several in that area. In the end, it looked like part of a house (maybe two superimposed) with a whalebone and a baleen toboggan. We retrieved a few bones and a piece of structural wood that were going to fall in any minute, and hope to be able to get a radiocarbon date or two. I only got hit by one big wave.
Closeup of eroding structure from the beach.
Hope to get some video or at least frame grabs available soon.
We got up with the goal of getting packed up. It wasn’t clear if the UICS logistics staff would be able to come and get us today, but we decided to finish all the field work, and pack up as much as possible. We got right on the screening, and recording of the edges of the midden and the units on the Pipe Monument mound. Owen went to work on a detailed profile of CS 2.
CS 2 after excavation and preparation for detailed profiling.
Once that was well in hand, it still wasn’t clear if we would be able to get home. I needed to go in to Barrow to make sure everything was progressing with the other project, so we decided I could take trailer load of field gear, samples and some of my gear back to town. That way, we would need less help getting back, and if the pickup wasn’t going to happen until tomorrow, I could bring back my sleeping bag and sleep in the mess tent.
Once I got to town, I unloaded and did some more work on the other project. It turned out that some logistics folks were available, so I went back down with them, and we managed to get everything back to town, and into the UICS yellow building. Everybody got to sleep in a real bed.
Last night was not particularly restful. The collapse had complicated matters quite a bit. However, after breakfast, we went back to work.
The old location was not viable, so I picked a new spot about a meter south, which became Column Sample 2 (CS 2). There was a bit of an overhang, and a very deep crack behind the bluff face. We needed to get all that material out of there. It took a bit of thought to figure out how to do it (not a usual archaeological operation, fortunately). Finally, we put a blue tarp down on the bottom of the main cleft so we could drag fill without anyone having to be under any overhangs or unstable areas, everybody got out of the way, and I cut the overhang back while standing as far back from it as possible. We then took the material out with a bucket brigade. Once that was done, I levered all the cracked material off, and we took it out the same way.
Bucket brigade in action.
Once that was done, I decided that we would excavate in levels labeled with letters, so we could proceed quickly, rather than wait for Owen to try to match levels in the detailed CS1 profile, which could have been a slow process. It seemed like the fairly warm, dry weather was letting the face dry out while detailed profiling was happening, and the longer it was exposed the more chance of another collapse. Owen would do another detailed profile after we got the column sample.
I also decided to make the sample a bit smaller in volume. CS 1 we had been trying for 75 cm x 75 cm (mostly because that size fit between some prior disturbances), but 50 cm x 50 cm seemed more manageable in the time we had left. One gallon from each sub level was retained as a bulk sample, and the remainder of sediment from the sub level was screened through 1/8″ and 1/4″ mesh.
We were just getting started when someone arrived to do a coastal DGPS survey that is part of the coastal mapping aspect of the Barrow Area Information Database project. He passed on a message that said my boss needed me to come back into town. (There is no effective connectivity at Walakpa, which is why this is being posted after the fact). I reviewed recording stratigraphy (or artifacts if any showed up) with Laura Crawford, made sure everyone knew how to use the InReach is needed, and headed back to Barrow by ATV around 1PM.
Something had come up with one of the compliance projects we are working on, and I needed to talk to people and draft some documents. I made it back to Walakpa around 10PM.
On the way, I met some folks out for an evening ride, and they stopped over to visit. One of them had spent a lot of time at Walakpa when she was younger, and had some great stories. I hope we can get them recorded for future generations.
The rest of the folks had managed to complete the column sample, so we talked about closing up shop tomorrow. We just need to finish screening, record the Test Units on the Pipe Monument midden, and backfill the TUs.
Owen and Laura got up early and screened what we had dug last night. Owen worked to finish the profile. There is an apparent marine level at Level 13.
CS 1 profile
We had problems with both transit and radio batteries. Despite that, I showed Laura how to run the transit, so I don’t have to be awake all the time. We shot in the remaining levels of CS 1, as well as the new test units on the mound.
Laura and Owen continued taking CS 1 down. Unfortunately, after the dinner break, they returned to find that the bottom of the profile had collapsed.
The view after dinner.
It was a pretty depressing situation. It left an overhang, so there was no way to just continue safely. It mean that we would have to start over again in the morning.
We went to work in earnest today. Owen went to work on recording the stratigraphy of the profile we had chosen for the column sample (CS 1). I had him marking the bottom of each level so we could continue excavation even after he went to sleep. Anne Garland and Laura kept working on the tests on the mound with the monument. The SW quad of the 1×1 came down on a cryoturbated sterile layer. There was metal throughout the cultural levels. We expanded northward to examine some wood in that wall.
Owen Mason examining the profile of CS 1.
Meanwhile, I set up the transit and began shooting in the CS 1 profile, as well as the bluff edge. The NW quad of TU 1 had similar results, so we put some 50x50s closer to the bluff edge to see if we could find datable material and the edge of the feature.
Mary Beth Timm and I took naps, so we could stay up late and work on the CS 1 profile. After dinner, we shot in the upper levels of the CS 1 profile, as well as a polar bear jaw that was exposed in Level 12, so that it would not get stepped on. Mary Beth & I started excavating CS 1. We are excavating in natural stratigraphic levels, with any level that is more than 5 cm in depth broken into 5 cm sub-levels. One gallon from each 5 cm is being kept as a bulk sample, and we are screening the remainder.
Midnight double selfie. Anne & Mary Beth at work on CS 1.
We kept going until it go so dark that we really couldn’t see the soil colors, which was around 2 AM. We had accomplished a fair bit, so we headed off to bed.
Results of our labor.Off to bed.
The weather is often best at night. It was really beautiful. A pair of loons was swimming on the lagoon.
Jeff Rasic from the National Park Service, along with Rebekah DeAngelo from Yale and her grad student Brooke Luokkala are in town to do some work, along with Laura Crawford, at the Birnirk National Historic Landmark site, which is on UIC lands (and yes, the actual name of the place is Piġniq, but the site has been written about as Birnirk, so I’m using that name for the site). Becky and Brooke got in Sunday, after travel from the east coast, and Jeff got in yesterday. However, the weather was pretty bad, so we postponed real fieldwork until today.
I did see them in the field briefly yesterday. I had to take a quick trip to the point to check on something for UIC Lands. On the way back, I met them near the Birnirk site, unfortunately a bit stuck in gravel. They were successfully extracted and continued their tour of Barrow.
Today we went out to Birnirk. We looked at all the mounds, Jeff got GPS points on mounds and other reference points, and Laura did quite a bit of coring. I flagged the perimeter of a “box” that we hope to have some of Craig Tweedie’s crew do detailed DGPS measurements on. That data can be used to make a contour map of the site, which can then be compared to the map James Ford made in the early 1950s, when he was there with Carter. It should be interesting to see how much sea level has changed. It clearly has risen since the earliest houses were occupied, and even since the early aerial photos, but the question is, how much?
Sun on water at Birnirk.Part of the crew visiting one of the mounds at Birnirk.
The crew (Owen Mason, Anne Garland, Mary Beth Timm, Laura Crawford and myself) gathered out at NARL, at a small yellow warehouse. We were using UIC Science archaeological gear. IHLC & Ilisagvik College let us use some tents, sleeping pads & kitchen gear. We managed to get everything packed into side-by-sides and trailers and headed off to Walakpa with Sean Gunnells, Oona Edwardsen and Ray Kious of the UICS logistics staff who weren’t otherwise occupied.
Loading up to head to Walakpa
We got to Walakpa around 2PM. We got camp set up, with a slight hitch because some of the tents had not been repacked properly when last used. However, the logistics staff dealt with it, and headed back to town.
We uncovered portions of the bluff so that we could examine the profiles and decide where we want to take the column sample. While walking the beach examining the bluff profiles, we noticed that there was a cultural layer exposed in the mound with one of the two monuments on it. Anne Garland laid out a 1×1 meter test, well back from the edge of the bluff, to see if it continued across the mound.
Laura Crawford excavating the SW quadrant of a 1×1 while Mary Beth Timm looks on. View NE along the coast toward Barrow.
It was clear that we couldn’t safely do a profile in the central area where the meat cache had been, since there was still an overhang. In addition, some of the geotextile fabric protecting the site was pinned by collapse of bluffs, preventing its removal. Eventually, after cleaning profiles on either side of the overhang, we picked a spot and Owen went to work on a detailed drawing.
We had visitors in the early morning, a young couple whose ATV had a flat, and were hoping that we had a tire pump. Unfortunately, we didn’t, so they headed on up the coast with both of them on one side of the ATV.
Out of Ice and Time 