Dig Afognak was one of Alaska’s first archaeology sites offering programs that incorporated visitors into the excavation as a way to help them learn more about Alaska’s history and culture, and earn money for the dig.
The program began nearly nine years ago in the small island village of Afognak near Kodiak, and tourists were encouraged to sign on as archaeologists for a day or week or more. Today, new options are cropping up to both fill the gap for visitors and help unravel Alaska’s fascinating indigenous cultures and their history in this land.
In Unalaska, an active commercial fishing town in the Aleutian Island chain, researchers at the Museum of the Aleutians will continue work on the local Amaknak Bridge site. Work began in 2003 at the site, and already archaeologists have uncovered some 20,000 items, including artwork and household tools. Last year, 10 distinct houses were found at the site, including stone walls and chimneys estimated to be 3,000 years old.
“It’sreally revolutionizing our view of prehistory,” according to Dr. Rick Knecht, lead researcher on the dig. Knecht said some of the things unearthed at the Amaknak site, including beads, artwork and lip plugs, have always been associated with the time period just prior to Russian contact with the Aleutians in the 1700s, but scientists are now accepting that Aleuts in the Aleutians traded these items much earlier.
There are still options for budding archaeologists to do a little bit of excavating in Kodiak, too. Although the project is on a smaller scale than the intensive Dig Afognak program, the Zaimka Mound site could reveal even more important clues to prehistoric life in Kodiak.
Researchers suspect that there could be artifacts that date 5,000 years earlier than currently documented material. The site is believed to be a prehistoric settlement buried under a meadow at Cliff Point. Earlier searches of the area yielded stone tools and the remainders of tents that are some of the oldest ever recorded on Kodiak Island and the surrounding area.
The program is operated by researchers at the Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository, and the public is welcome to volunteer during this year’s work, which is set to begin in late July. Visitors meet up with dig staff at the museum in the morning with sack lunch in hand and spend the day sorting ancient artifacts in a water screen and unearthing tent rings up to 7,500 years old. The Zaimka Mound site represents the early Ocean Bay time period, marked by a fishing village culture.
According to Patrick Saltonstall, a curator at the Alutiiq Museum and leader of the Zaimka Mound dig program, the cultural evidence he and his crew are unearthing now on Kodiak Island is literally rewriting the current understanding of the area’s Alutiiq people.
“We’re an active research institution, so it’s very satisfying,” Saltonstall said. “What we excavated last year will be in the school curriculum this year, so what we learn goes directly back into the Native community. We’re writing the history books for the Alutiiq people themselves.”
There are currently more than 50,000 pieces representing researchers’ work. The fruits of their ongoing labors are being examined, cleaned and preserved in the repository’s lab, and will be available for viewing at the Alutiiq Museum.
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