Monthly Archives: August 2015

Kashaveroff: A Month in Review

Rachel Gill checking in for one final time, this time from the comfort of home. This post sums up the end of the dig and my reflections.

Profiles:

The last time we chatted, pits in Block B were on the mind. We finally reached the bottom of those pits in some areas, mostly along the north wall of Block B. It was getting down to the wire, the last few days of our excavation season, and we needed to see the profile.

Quick digression: a profile is the view of the wall and all the layers that we have dug out. Typically, we measure and draw these on the last day in order to get a picture of how all the layers in the stratigraphy come together and how they looked before we took it all out of the ground.

BlockB2

Profile example: the north wall of Block B – The Pit! Note the thick orange ash (Level 2) on the left, which dates to 3800 years ago. The black charcoal is the fill of the pit.

This profile allowed us to see the pit as it would have been if we hadn’t dug everything out. A thick black layer curved in the shape of a ‘U’ dominated the right of the north wall, and the orange ash of L2 was virtually absent in that portion of the wall, as if the previous residents had dug out the ash and tossed it somewhere else to make their smoke pit.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAStudents Ryan, Kate, Alexandria, Rachel, and Professor
Catherine 
West, mapping and drawing the features and profile in Block B

While we uncovered the majority of the charcoal and rock pit fill, we did not have time to dig out the walls of the pit. The plan for next year is to remove the walls and the base of the pit to see what lies beneath.

What else was happening at the Kashevaroff Site?

To determine the extent of the site, the last week was not only filled with frantic digging in the two main excavations, but a few test pits scattered around the site. A test pit is just what it sounds like: a 1 meter by 1 meter hole in the ground used to see if 1) there was any kind of human activity and 2) how the stratigraphy compares to the rest of the site. We ultimately decided on three test pits, one far to the north past the main grid, another far to the south on a small knoll past Block B and the smoke pits, and one right in the middle of the two. For the sake of simplicity, we will call these 201, 301, and 401 respectively.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Students Sami Kassel and Hannah Wellman
after completing test pit 301

201 and 301 suggested the site stretches a long way. 201 looked similar to the 2X2 grid completed much earlier in the season next to Block A: very shallow with defined layers but nothing much underneath L3. 301 was much deeper, but the layers were less well defined. In fact, everything below the orange ash of L2 was muddled and confused, a heterogeneous mixture of sediments that weren’t identifiable as any specific layer. We expected to find glacial till at the bottom, but we found glacial outwash instead. This is basically slate sand that was deposited by glacial runoff.

401 looks like a HOUSE! This test pit is right between the two main grids, and was by far the most interesting. Below the L2 orange ash, we found what appeared to be the partial floor of a house. This indicates that not only were people smoking their food, but perhaps they were living nearby. Next season, we hope to open up the house entirely to see its features and perhaps date is specifically.

Sod quarrying might explain the discrepancies in the stratigraphy and depths to glacial material among the pits — in order to built their houses, smoke pits, other structures, and what have you, the residents were digging up sod from one part of the site and moving it to other parts. This would account for the very shallow dirt and complete absence of some layers in areas and the incredible depth in others. Hopefully we can test this hypothesis with further excavation.

Reflections

Over all, we did find some incredible artifacts and incredible potential for this site to hold answers to questions not yet discovered.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAStudent Rachel Gill mid-excavation

On a personal level, I just want to thank all of the amazing people that made this possible. I learned more than I thought possible about the Alutiiq people, their past and present, and myself as a student, a person, and a future archaeologist.

Island Otters and Ancient People

Hello there! My name is Hannah, and I am a graduate student at the University of Oregon, and your guest blogger for the week!

Hannah
Hannah excavating at the Kashevaroff Site, summer 2015

My study focus is on zooarchaeology, which is the study of animal remains, like bones and teeth. I'm especially interested in how humans and mammals interacted in coastal environments over time and how archaeology might intersect with understanding wildlife conservation. My recent research has been about sea otter populations in the past in the state of Oregon. I'm interested in understanding how Oregon sea otter populations have differed from those in California and Washington over thousands of years so we can understand how to best manage them today.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/09/pictures/140920-sea-otter-awareness-pictures-animals-ocean-science/

Even though I study sea otter bones, I have never seen a wild sea otter before this Saturday, when we had a bonfire on a beach at Chiniak here on Kodiak. This is because sea otters were nearly extirpated (or basically rendered extinct) along the Northwest Coast by the 1900s, except for a few groups in Alaska and California. Attempts to reintroduce the species to Oregon failed, so it wasn't until I left the state I could see one in the wild! Thankfully the sea otter is doing better in some areas, and has been reintroduced in British Columbia and Washington.

HannahBone
Measuring an archaeological sea otter humerus!

However, it is interesting for me to think about sea otters in Alaska specifically, because sea otters were extirpated largely due to Russian hunting - the incoming Russian traders pressured and forced the Alutiiq and other Native peoples along the Pacific coast to obtain sea otters for the 18th and 19th century fur trade. So while sea otters had been hunted before, it was hunted to an unprecedented degree for its furs in this era. Based on the artifact types recovered from the site of Karluk on Kodiak, dug and housed at the Alutiiq Museum, a recent publication suggests sea otters were not intensively hunted until Russian fur traders arrived  (Steffian et al. 2015).

The history of sea otters in Alaska from prehistory to the modern day is about conservation, discussions of colonialism, indigenous rights, and environmental and human exploitation. Being on this beautiful island has reminded me of the interdisciplinary nature of archaeology - it is complicated and messy beyond the mud and dust.

Check out the newest book from the Alutiiq Museum: Steffian, Amy, Marnie Leist, Sven Haakanson, and Patrick Saltonstall. 2015. Kal'unek: From Karluk. University of Alaska Press, Fairbanks.

Newsmakers

We have finally made it. Stars were born. Our celebrity is on the rise.

We are proud to announce that the Community Archaeology project - including the fabulous BU crew - was featured on Anchorage's KTVA Frontiers program this past weekend. We were interviewed about the archaeological site and the museum work we have been doing, and we got our University's participation a little press!

Click here to enjoy the show.

UAA grad student Alexandria made the cut!