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Author Topic: Archaeology of the Aleutian Islands  (Read 178 times)
Description: Artifacts of Unangam Aleuts may span 1,000 years, expert says
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Sovereign
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« on: July 03, 2007, 10:43:32 AM »


Crews resume excavation at Aleutian archaeological site

 MONICA SOUTHWORTH
The Dutch Harbor Fisherman

UNALASKA - In May, an archaeology crew that began work last summer resumed digging at the South Channel Bridge site on Bunker Hill.

The primary ruins being recovered are the walls of about three houses of Unangam Aleuts.

"It's really a nicely constructed wall, and there was sod in between the rocks," said Mike Yarborough, head archaeologist at the site.

"What's left was dug into the slope, everything else collapsed and fell down the slope," he added, pointing out the slope facing Henry Swanson Drive.

"We followed the natural soil horizon up the hillside," he said.

Currently, carbon dates on samples are in the same range as the ones taken in 2003 by Rick Knecht, the original archaeologist at the site, before he moved away from Unalaska. Yarborough said they haven't found anything older but are planning on testing for younger dates.

"We suspect we'll find samples pointing to about a 1,000-year occupation," Yarborough said.

In 2003, archaeologist Knecht from the University of Alaska Anchorage and Richard Davis from Bryn Mawr College directed a field crew that excavated about one-third of an ancient village site.

The artifacts discovered provided information pertinent to the research of prehistoric Eastern Aleutian cultural history, household archaeology, subsistence technology and adaptations to environmental changes, according to Knecht.

Last fall, the crew didn't begin work until late August. Two things prevented the digging crew from accomplishing a lot. The first was the weather, and the second was when beginning the dig, the crew discovered that the site was approximately double the size they expected.

In September, it began to rain, and Yarborough said it was too muddy in October to get anything accomplished. At that point, a second season was planned.

"The more we dug, the more there seemed to be," he said.

After recalculation and several tests, the crew determined the original estimate done by Rick Knecht in 2003 was under the actual volume.

The crew is funded by the state of Alaska for two months, until the end of July. The bridge construction crew is scheduled to begin work on Henry Swanson Drive on Aug. 15. A two-week buffer window was left in case something unexpected came up.

"Everything is basically the same as last year," Yarborough said. "The only difference is we went from digging on OC (Ounalashka Corp.) land to state land, but that doesn't affect anything we're doing."

When returning to the site in May, Yarborough said it had remained "pretty dry," but after beginning, it rained for about the first two weeks.

Despite a rough beginning because of the weather, the group didn't have the same startup lag experienced last August. Yarborough said it took about a week to get going and become accustomed with the site.

From Henry Swanson Drive, a backhoe has reached up as far as possible, and no more work on the North Face can be done. Now the crew is working on the top of the site.

Last week, the crew reached a milestone when the backhoe was able to get to the eastern edge of the site.

"We're still finding a lot of house features from the top. We're collecting artifacts and sending them to the lab," Yarborough said.

Local archaeologist Jason Rogers has been creating extensive maps of the site throughout the whole process.

"It's good stuff pirate treasure," Rogers joked at the end of a long day.


Aleutian Archaeology, from east to west.
Archaeological research in the Aleutians is currently fluorescing with investigations by many researchers. From the various research projects that are ongoing, on the Alaska Peninsula, in the Shumagins, in and around Unalaska, and in the central and western Aleutians, new light is being shed on the prehistory of the human occupation. For instance, we now know that Aleutian occupants constructed rectangular houses as well as round houses around 3000 years ago (Figure 1). Such rectangular houses had previously been thought to only date to after the time of contact with Russians. In addition, the rich and diverse material culture indicates a very complicated and interesting origin and interaction with other arctic and subarctic occupants. Relying on these recent investigations, my research focuses on how people made their chipped stone tools (for harpoons, knives, points, and what ever other tools they needed) and how this changed through time.

Since stone technology has survived whereas softer materials (such as bone, grass, and skins) survive less often, archaeologists must rely on chipped stone technology to characterize cultural change through time.  Based on this, what we know today is that people have been living in the eastern Aleutians at least since 9000 years ago and have continued to live here until modern times. The central and western Aleutians are less well known but, so far, the central Aleutians appear to have been occupied only 6000 years ago and the western Aleutians as late as 3500 years ago.

In the eastern Aleutians, between 9000 and 7000 years ago, people were using very delicate blade tools, which are difficult to make, for hunting, fishing and cutting and used ground stone technology for lamps and abraders. Sometime after 7000 years ago, a new kind of chipped stone technology appears, bifacial technology, and is used along with blade technology suggesting the same population in the islands chose to adopt a new technology. This may signal new interactions with other groups or just a good idea by a local person that spread across the islands. We also see bifacial technology and some blade technology in the 6000 year old site in the central Aleutians, although this is a small sample.

Between 4000 and 3000 years ago, Aleutian sites continue to have bifacial and blade technology, but bone technology becomes more common (perhaps only because they are preserving given that they are younger) and the style of tools are notable similar to traditions in interior Alaska. There is considerable stylistic differentiation along the island chain that has yet to be studied in a systematic manner. After 3000 years ago, we see the increasing elaboration of the bone tools and ground stone and slate tools (made into ulus) and less use of chipped stone technologies with blade technologies completely disappearing. Bifacial tools and very expedient tools made on flakes continue to reflect the continued use of chipped stone technologies.


THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN ALEUT

Western Aleutian Archaeological and Paleobiological Project
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Sovereign
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« Reply #1 on: July 08, 2007, 01:02:54 PM »

I will admit to be surprised that here at History Hunters we are reporting on developments in history and archaeology, to do with cultures all over the world - and very very few people with an 'interest' ever drop by to add their own news, or thoughts.

Here is a second report on the Aleuts.

I have never been anywhere near there. I know next to nothing about the place. It would be good if somebody who did would take the 'trouble' top drop in and say something.

Dig hints Unalaska site may go back a thousand years

HOUSES: Archaeologists have located three homes in 2nd year of excavations.

By MONICA SOUTHWORTH The Dutch Harbor Fisherman

Published: July 7, 2007
Last Modified: July 7, 2007 at 01:38 AM

UNALASKA -- In May, an archaeology crew that began work last summer resumed digging at the South Channel Bridge site on Bunker Hill.

The primary ruins being recovered are the walls of about three houses of Unangam Aleuts.

"It's really a nicely constructed wall, and there was sod in between the rocks," said head archaeologist Mike Yarborough.

"What's left was dug into the slope; everything else collapsed and fell down the slope," he added, pointing out the slope facing Henry Swanson Drive.

"We followed the natural soil horizon up the hillside," he said.

Currently, carbon dates on samples are in the same range as the ones taken in 2003 by Rick Knecht, the original archaeologist at the site, before he moved away from Unalaska. Yarborough said they haven't found anything older but are planning on testing for more recent dates.

"We suspect we'll find samples pointing to about a 1,000-year occupation," Yarborough said.

In 2003, archaeologist Knecht from the University of Alaska Anchorage and Richard Davis from Bryn Mawr College directed a field crew that excavated about one-third of an ancient village site.

The artifacts discovered provided information helpful to research on prehistoric Eastern Aleutian culture, household archaeology, subsistence technology and adaptations to environmental changes, according to Knecht.
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« Reply #2 on: July 21, 2007, 07:26:38 AM »

Hello Sovereign,

I have still not quite made myself acquainted with the entire HH site and its labyrinth of historical and archaeological reporting; however, this post did catch my eye because of my interest in the subject.  Allow me to thank you for posting this topic.

The Aleutiiq tribes of what we now call the Aleutian Islands played a major role in the history of European commerce and conflict in the northwest Pacific.  The effects of European cultural interaction with the Aleuts were both long-lasting as well as important.  By way of interlude, it should be remarked that the pattern for the Russian-Aleut cultural interaction was set during the loosely amalgamated Tsarist expansion from Europe into Siberian, an expansion spearheaded by Cossack chieftains.

The Cossack chieftains and their druzhina (roughly-personal bodyguards who shared the same mess as their leader) in their relentless search for virgin sable grounds had established ostrogs (fortified tribute/trading posts) as far east as Kamchatka (1697).  By this period, the Cossack druzhina, forced by necessity as well as convenience, were working very closely with cooperative elements of Siberian indigenous tribal groups (Kamchadels, Chuchki, etc.) and sources begin to refer to Cossacks controlling such mixed bands as promishleniki (plural form). These promishleniki were to prove absolutely indispensable to latter Russian expansion into the fur markets of China and Europe because they were able to borrow the best of Siberian (and later Alaskan) indigenous hunting and survival technology and combine these knowledge sets with European practices.  In any event, to give some perspective, as Habsburg power in peninsular Spain was on the wane, Tsarist Russia was in the process of becoming very tenuously established on the shores of the eastern Pacific.

 In the immediate aftermath of the Great Northern War (1700-1721), Tsar Peter the Great, whose naval pursuits and developments are well-known, directed his government to draft plans for a more systematic exploration of Siberia and the Pacific.   These plans were carried through by Catherine the Greta�s regime under the well-documented agency of Vitus Bering. The story of Vitus Bering�s shipwreck, where his crew was forced to cloth themselves in sea-otter skins by necessity in order to survive, is well-known and well-told.  These bescurvied survivors found that the otter skins they wore were worth princely sums in the markets of Qing dynasty China.  Thus, these survivors of Bering�s last voyage inadvertently brought sea-otter furs to the attention of Russian merchants involved in the sable trade at the city of Okhotsk in the early summer of 1742.  This commercial discovery and the huge windfall of profits spurred Russian merchant houses in Okhotsk to fund expeditions into the Aleutian archipelago in earnest.

The Russian American Company (RAK) and, as the New England traders termed it, the Old China trade, depended to a large degree on the exploitation of marine mammal furs, particularly those of the sea otter.  With this realization, the exploration, the commerce and conflict, between Russian and Aleut ensued.  First under the auspices of the Shelikov Company, and then under the informal direction of the Russian state under the Russian American Company and its most famous director, Alexander Baranov (1746-1819)..


The Russians, as they pushed along the Kuril and Aleutian archipelagos westward toward Alaska, found that European technology, science, and knowledge alone would not allow Europeans to economically ground their culture in this new environment.  Very early in the contact process between the Alutiiq and the Russians, it became clear that many elements of the native technology base were superior in several respects to that of the European.  In no instance was this more glaringly evident than in the Alutiiq technology associated with hunting marine mammals, i.e. the baidarka (kayak), baidara (a large, wood frame skin boat), and the toggled harpoon.  In fact the entire cultural complex of the Aleutiiq was shaped around the use of the baidarka, even the layout of Alutiiq villages were influenced by the necessity to which the Alutiiq food supply was related to use of the baidarka.  Generally, whenever geography cooperated, Aleutiiq villages were situated very near long projecting points with sandy beaches on each opposing shore. Such a configuration allowed baidarkas and baidaras to be launched and landed on a lee shore no matter from what quarter the winds blew.

Needless to say, from the European standpoint, the inshore and surf-zone capabilities of both the baidarka and baidara far exceeded anything in the European inventory.  Moreover, the Aleutiiq skill and well developed tactics for voyaging, hunting, and navigating in these indigenous craft held the key for successful Russian exploitation of the sea otter.  The Soviet era ethnographer Rosa G. Liapunova summarized Aleutiiq skills, stating that the young Alutiiq males were:

�trained to operate the baidarka: they were taught to be skillful both in launching and the landing of the baidarka, how to manage it in heavy surf, and how to save themselves and others in dangerous circumstances, but especially how to be skillful in hunting and fishing [Their education encompassed everyday training exercises: how to sit straight with legs outstretched forward and to be able at the same time to bend the arm in the proper manner for harpoon throwing.


Of course this was far from a happy marriage of cultures; the Russians exploited rather than complemented the Aleutiiq way of life.  The promishleniki and the officers of the RAK pressed-ganged the Aleutiiq into serving in vast sea-otter hunting expeditions, sometimes exceeding 200 baidarkas, that lasted months and traversed vast swaths of Alaskan and North American Pacific coastlines.

The Aleutiiq baidarka was deemed instrumental to a successful otter hunt as to be seen as indispensable to the RAK.  As otter grounds were progressively decimated during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the RAK began a program of leasing baidarkas and Aleutiiq crews to American vessels under contract.  Under what came to be termed Baranov�s contract system, Alutiiq baidarka�s plied waters as far ranging as Baja Mexico and Kauai, Hawaii (working from a European support vessel).  The town in California where I grew up, Cayucos, derives its name from the Spanish lexeme for baidarka (kayak).  Several points along the coast of the Californias continue to bear place names that witness to the activities of these Aleutiiq and Russian hunters (Ft. Ross, Russian Gulch, Russian River, Cayucos, etc.)

The European-Aleutiiq cultural interaction represents an episode where the indigenous peoples developed a mode of coexistence, albeit an unequal one, with the invading Europeans.  The history of this contact is instructive because it further represents an example where virtually every European observer remarks on the superiority and ingenuity of the native technology encountered.  Because of these unusual characteristics, as well as the rapid change that Russian contact wrought among the Aleutiiq, any effort to expand our modern understanding of the pre-contact Alutiiq culture is of fundamental importance.

I read with great interest that there are now in progress numerous field projects that will shed light on the pre-contact Aleutiiq culture.  Such knowledge gained will necessarily help place the Russian impact on Aleutiiq culture and its environment in much better perspective.  At issue is a very important question that looms before humanity: what is our relationship between our economy and our ecology?  With the pre-contact Aleutiiq we are presented with a dimly documented culture of sustenance existing successfully within a very delicate ecology for approximately a thousand years.  Against this record, we have a European model of economic exploitation that spanned some three generations, drove the sea-otter to near extinction, and greatly upset the ecological balance of the northwest Pacific.  Is there a cultural beauty or value in a human society evolved to sustain both itself and its dependant ecology?  How do we moderns with our economies of scale and exploitation measure up against this Aleutiiq past now coming to light, trowel by trowel, in Unalaska?

Source sited for these comments:

Rosa G. Liapunova. Essays on the Ethnography of the Aleuts (at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century), trans. Jerry Shelest, eds. William B. Workman, Lydia Black. (Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 1996)

Fair Winds and Following Seas,

Lubby

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