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Placenames History of Afognak Archaeology Afognak Residency Data Collection |
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1999 Archaeology INTRODUCTION BACKGROUND Before recent introductions, land mammals were very limited, notably giant brown bears, river otters and foxes, and were not of major economic importance compared with sea mammals. Instead, the land was essentially a platform for living along the ocean, for maritime hunting, fishing and gathering. The cool, stormy, wet climate – in a word, the Aleutian low pressure system – constrains nature and human activity. Spring comes slowly and little green vegetation is to be seen until the middle of June. The heads of inlets where salt water is diluted with fresh water freeze, as at the mouth of the Afognak River, but with their almost-temperate climate the coasts remain ice-free during winter. Thus, hunting and fishing techniques were not oriented to working from sea ice, unlike the case along the arctic coast. Until less than a millennium ago, there was no spruce forest to shelter settlements and buffer the impact of storms. But there is an upside to rough weather. High winds and wind-enhanced currents actually increase the primary oceanic productivity (of phytoplankton) of the western Gulf of Alaska and thus make a positive contribution towards supporting the abundance of fish and consequently of sea mammals and of seabirds. The rich oceanic setting includes fishing banks located east of Afognak, sea mammal rookeries and haul outs, bird rookeries, migratory populations of whales and fur seals, and a bountiful littoral zone exposed by tides that range by up to 13 feet between high and low extremes. Thus, the complexly embayed and channelled shoreline supports ecological diversity and an abundance of virtually everything from whales to periwinkles. And there is a lot of shore habitat (3600 km for the Kodiak Archipelago by one measure) in relation to landmass. The wet climate (about 80 inches annual precipitation) and complex topography combine to endow Afognak with more than a score of streams that support salmon runs. These formed the basis for a major summer fishery at the larger stream mouths, as at the Afognak River (Litnik), Selezneva (Little Afognak), Malina Creek (Malinovski Litnik) and Portage River (at Discoverer Bay). Thanks to the gouging action of Ice Age glaciers the islands not only were left with their intricate fiorded coastline but also with lakes to which the red salmon return to spawn. Though there was a certain degree of cultural continuity throughout 7000 years, this duration was punctuated by numerous developments, such as making tools by grinding slate instead of flaking them from hard stone. This leads to the convenient division of prehistory into a series of periods – Ocean Bay, Kachemak and Koniag – here called traditions. Deglaciation of the islands and adjacent Alaska Peninsula at the end of the Ice Age about 12,000 years ago sets a limit to the possible age of settlement. As yet, though, no known archaeological remains on either Kodiak or Afognak come even close to this age. THE PEOPLE THE RUSSIANS MET What kind of people did Shelikhov's men meet? The answer to this question is, in a sense, the top layer of salt fish in the deep barrel of prehistory that this chapter deals with. Let us look into the keg. The Kodiaks, Native Americans, Koniags or "Aleuts," now called Alutiiq, lived by, with and from the sea. Whalers were important specialists in Alutiiq society, though somewhat feared. They relied on whales rising to the surface or drifting ashore after they were struck with poison-tipped spears. The deep bays around Afognak, like Danger Bay and Kizhuyak Bay, were especially suited for the Alutiiq method of whaling. And the whales were plentiful in Marmot Bay and at the tide rips outside Whale Passage, Afognak Strait and Shuyak Strait. Hrdlicka reported that ritual whale trap was drawn across outer Kizhuyak Bay using a pouch of fat from a corpse. Ordinary hunters focused on harbor seals, supplemented by many porpoise and sea lions, to supply most of the red meat and also oil and hides. The seals were harpooned from kayaks or from the shore after being attracted within range by a decoy. The decoys consisted of seal head-shaped helmets and inflated seal skins. Seals also were entangled in large nets and were clubbed at haulouts as also probably also were sea lions. And hunters managed to harpoon many fleet porpoises. Bears were hunted with bows and arrows, though not many were killed. Occasionally there were trips across Shelikof Strait to the Alaska Peninsula for caribou, or the meat and antlers of this animal were obtained by trade from Peninsular Alutiiqs. Sea birds were taken with multi-pronged spears and in nets. Their rookeries were raided for eggs. In the sea, many fish obligingly attached themselves to hooked lines, especially cod, rockfish and halibut. Of equal importance was the summertime focus on the salmon fishery at the mouths of streams, especially the Afognak River. Weirs located close to the summer settlements held back and penned the salmon so they could be speared. The food quest followed the natural migration cycles of animals and fish. In turn, this cycle formed a calendar for other aspects of Alutiiq life. In the fall, after the salmon runs, people returned to their main settlements and hunted sea mammals as the time for winter festivities approached. The main or winter villages were located close to the outer coasts, so as not to be left isolated and sometimes frozen-in at the heads of bays. Houses usually were not numerous, but extended families or cooperating households of about 20 persons lived in each dwelling. Thus, a settlement could hold 100 to 200 persons, though some were larger or smaller. The main or central common room served as a workshop and kitchen, and also for storage, while nuclear or individual families occupied appended anterooms. One of the side chambers was used for a wet "sweat bath" similar in some aspects to the Russian banya (but the rocks were heated in the main room and then taken into the bath). The structures were set into a rectangular pit, dug too feet or deeper into the ground for protection from the weather, banked with turf, and covered with thatch. The superstructure was of posts and beams, the roof probably cribbed with a central smoke hole-skylight. Historical ethnographers and surviving traditions fail to describe the composition of a household. It very likely was an extended family, possibly sisters and their husbands and offspring, plus surviving parents. There also could have been unmarried brothers, foster children, attached persons of low status and actual slaves. Persons who died were interred within the village area, sometimes even in one of the anterooms of their house, or were taken to an old abandoned village for burial (their ancestral home?). In a sense, they continued to be members of the community. Important persons might be mummified and placed in secluded rock shelters where they risked being discovered by whalers and used in secret rites. Other rituals and ceremonies were more public. These are incompletely recorded but included dances, masked theatrical performances and feasts during the winter season. At this time the recently deceased were honored with a memorial feast. Certain ceremonies had the objective of pleasing and propagating game, while some were invitational feasts for trading and socializing with neighboring villages. Important persons included chiefs. They often were "rich men." Their office appears to have been inherited to some degree, from father to son or uncle to nephew, but also was attained and maintained on a personal basis. Shamanism was prominent and was practiced by both men and women, some of whom were transvestites. In addition, there were herbalist curerers and other persons with medical expertise. The office of the wise-man or kasek, who organized religious ceremonies, was held by yet another specialist later equated to an Orthodox priest,. Whalers had a special but somewhat feared and "unclean" status. Finally, the Alutiiq owned slaves, but few details are recorded and slavery does not appear to have been essential to Alutiiq economics and society. SOME NATURAL HISTORY The relatively high precipitation (around 80 inches or 200 cm) supplies a large number of streams, which, because of topography, tend to be short. This results in almost innumerable streams and “lagoons” where salmon and Dolly Varden char and Steelhead trout spawn. Most numerous are the pink salmon and red salmon. The latter ascend the streams until they reach a lake, but “pinks" and the other species (silver, chum) do not need lakes to spawn, though some also go there. Red salmon arrived as early as the end of April in former years when runs were great, and sliver salmon linger in a necrotic state at the spawning beds into winter, but salmon are available primarily during the late spring and summer. Most of the interior of Afognak is hilly and even mountainous, except the east side, and offers few subsistence resources compared with the sea. Settlements and subsistence activities thus were oriented towards the sea, except for salmon fishing camps which sometimes were located above the mouths of major streams. Forests are limited essentially to spruce trees, and they were absent until the second millennium A.D. Older examples from Afognak Island are about 600 years to 600 years old. It is thought that these examples may be among the first spruce to have taken root on the island. Today stands of balsam poplar and cottonwood and black birch are rarely found on Afognak, which contrasts with the case on Kodiak. However, poplar groves may have occurred on Afognak before the rise of the spruce forest. The most prominent vegetation for thousands of years prior to the arrival of the spruce forest was shrub birch and alders. Now, spruce has crowded the alders into unshaded patches of their former habitat. Prior to European contact the primary source of timber for construction was driftwood, brought in by ocean currents and conveniently barked and trimmed through battering in the surf. In early times, after people had combed their home beaches for a generation, driftwood may have become scarce. Accordingly, good timbers would have been salvaged and reused when houses were abandoned or rebuilt. Today, most driftwood in the area originates through West Coast logging or other human activity. Major environmental changes affected Afognak in the past. These included melting of the Ice Age (Pleistocene) glaciers that had buried the land, and subsequent colonization by plants and animals culminating in the arrival of people. They came during a time of encroaching seas, before the relationship between the edge of the land and ocean stabelized roughly 6000 years ago. Land-sea relationships pose a complex scenario of waters rising as global ice caps melted (eustatic rise), land emerging as it became free of the weight of the ice (isostacy), and changes in level, either up or down, as the earth's plates shifted and earthquakes rippled through the crust (tectonics) . On the whole, except for the short-term effects of earthquakes and gradual loss due to coastal erosion, the shore has been near its present position for approximately the last 6000 years. Earlier edges of the land now are under the ocean. This "hypsithermal interval" ended about 3500 years ago and the so-called "Neoglacial" began. The climate became cooler and probably wetter, according to the interpretation of pollen (e.g., plant species identification and abundance) recovered in bogs. Perhaps significantly, the Neoglacial is the time when the Ocean Bay tradition ended, Early Kachemak began, and occasional traces of a Bering Sea people, called the Arctic Small Tool tradition, appeared south of the Alaska Peninsula. Changes in the distribution of fish stocks could have occurred again and some mammals peculiar to the Arctic and Bering sea regions might have wandered south to Kodiak, but that remains to be determined. Later, early in the second millennium AD spruce trees arrived at the northeast end of the islands and began their halting march southwestward to reach, only recently, halfway to the end of Kodiak. More recent climatic cooling during the second half of the second millennium AD, called the “Little Ice Age,” coincides with the final blooming of precontact Alutiiq culture and may have been a cause according to archaeologist Richard Knecht. In particular, the size of salmon runs could have increased as the climate became cooler and rainier. There also were short term adverse effects from earthquakes and tidal waves and resultant episodes of shoreline erosion. Some villages had to relocate or move back. Littoral zone shellfish that had been a source of food were killed off temporarily, whether the land sank or rose, but became reestablished after a brief period. It is interesting to speculate on whether any of Kodiak's limited indigenous land fauna (brown bear, red fox, vole, river otter, weasel, little brown bat and ground squirrel) was introduced by humans. Ground squirrels, especially the race found on Chirikof Island, were prominent early during the contact period as a source of pelts for parkas. Zoologists think that they are an introduction on the basis of the sporadic distribution of colonies on Kodiak and offshore islands. The absence of this common species from precontact midden sites, except on Chirikof where they are prehistoric, seemingly supports the interpretation that they were introduced at the beginning of the Russian period to replace more desirable furs that were diverted to the European trade. However ground squirrels were present and well established on Marmot Island at least by 1792 AD according to Russian narratives of exploration. Thus, they probably predate European contact. Their ephmeral presence at some localities (Pillar Mountain, Woody Island, Marmot Island) may relate to human intervention and predation by dogs. If sites with animal remains older than those presently known from the Ocean Bay tradition are discovered, this may help establish the antiquity of some species in the Kodiak Archipelago. THE THREE ARCHAEOLOGICAL TRADITIONS Three sequential archaeological traditions are recognized on Kodiak though transitions and ongoing features held in common establish some degree of continuity between traditions. The first tradition, Ocean Bay, starting about 5500 BC, is punctuated by technological developments that stand out both within and beyond the Kodiak region, the development of ground slate implements, for instance. Then about 1900 BC the Kachemak tradition developed. This is a basic old North Pacific culture with strong ties to Palaeo-Eskimo cultures of the Bering Sea region and with Aleutian Islanders. By about 1200 AD Kachemak had become basically the ancestral culture of the Alutiiqs encountered by the Russians in 1763. This was the Koniag tradition. The chronology used here is based on corrected radiocarbon dates. Radiocarbon dating is one of archaeology's most powerful tools, but it errs slightly. Appropriate corrections can be applied on the basis of information derived from comparing tree ring (true) dates with raw radiocarbon dates. Generally, dates of the last 2000 years fluctuate by a few decades on either side of real age, but after that they gradually fall short. By 4000 years ago the shortfall has increased to about 350 years; 5000 years ago it is about 600 years (i.e., a radiocarbon date of 4400 years actually means the age is 5000 years). Radiocarbon dates should be interpreted with a certain degree of latitude because laboratory methods entail statistical imprecision (the + "error"). As well, the date may be indirect. For instance, it is assumed that the age of wood burned in a hearth, which may be old driftwood, tells when the fire was lit. That is not necessarily so. Both the artifacts and the nonmaterial culture of these traditions can be thought of in terms of functional groups, particularly (a) hunting and fishing, including boats and weapons, (b) tools including tools to make things or process materials, (c) household items such as lamps and pottery, (d) clothing and personal adornment, (e) ceremonial, ritual and games, and also (f) architecture, meaning houses and other structures. Artifacts generally were made of local materials, though certain furs, tusk-shaped dentalium shells, ivory, marble, amber and jet (coal) used for ornaments and carvings, caribou antler, beaver and porcupine teeth for implements, possibly red ochre for rituals, and some food, especially caribou venison, were imported from the mainland. Metal, mainly copper imported through middlemen at Cook Inlet, is only infrequently found in archaeological sites and then is late. Pottery partially replaced bent-wood tubs or other containers for preparing food on southern Kodiak during Koniag times but was not adopted on Afognak Island. Undoubtedly, though, Afognak Islanders knew about pottery as it was used briefly across at Anton Larsen Bay, about 1100 AD. The island was self-sufficient in resources, and it was primarily luxury goods that were imported. But not all technology was developed locally, and probably, some of the customs, games, songs, stories, rituals and style fashions (ideational culture) that complemented technology first appeared among neighboring groups and were adopted by the islanders. These commonalties, along with a shared language helped maintain a distinct Pacific Eskimo culture area around the Northern Gulf of Alaska. By frequency, the tool category predominates, but the most common tools like hammer stones, abraders and cobble spalls are not very distinguished, they being essentially natural uitilized stones. The distinctive character of each of the three traditions depends very much on styles of hunting implements and on a limited number of artifacts in other categories such as distinctively styled Kachemak stone lamps and heavy grooved Koniag splitting adzes. Bentwood containers, basketry, kayak and umiak parts, weapon shafts, labrets, figurines and dolls, masks and other ceremonial gear, and game pieces also are prominent at waterlogged sites where wood, cordage and baskets have been preserved. The only waterlogged site intensively investigated thus far is a Koniag site at Karluk and we can only surmise which similar items were present in earlier cultures. Waterlogged sites occur when ground water to rises into the site deposits, as happens at the base of a hill: the water excludes air and this slows the decay of wood. Some customs are inferred from indirect evidence. For example, massive accumulations of fire-cracked rock strongly indicates use of the so-called sweat bath, which appears to have been a steam bath or wet sauna similar to the Russian "banya." This bath actually is recorded ethnographically and may have been an important adaptation to damp, cold conditions and a cure for incipient hypothermia. The Koniags were exceedingly fond of the bath and at their sites accumulations of discarded fire-cracked rock are up to six feet thick. In the description of each tradition attention will be given to housing. Houses, together with clothing, protected a person from the environment. The household organization also helped a person articulate with the rest of the community. The size and layout of houses reflect the organization of households. Large houses imply planning, leadership and probably also wealth in order to assemble the necessary materials and secure labor to erect a dwelling. It is instructive, too, to compare the features of housing in permanent villages with those of summer villages or fishing camps. Data for this comparison, which as yet are sparse, suggest that houses were similar at both types of settlements. Possibly the cohesiveness of households was maintained between the seasons and through moves from one settlement to another. Houses also contain features that give clues about cooking techniques and storage. Knowledge of precontact housing on Afognak is derived primarily from the Koniag tradition village at Settlement Point supplemented by surface traces or house outlines at other localities. OCEAN BAY (STAGES I AND II, APPROXIMATELY 5500 BC TO 1900 BC) The highly successful Ocean Bay hunters managed for several thousand years with a single type of non-toggling harpoon head, made in a range of sizes – 'if it works don't fiddle with it' seems to have been their axiom. There also were spears in several varieties, including ones for birds and fish, some with flaked stone tips, some with bone heads. It is not known if they had the bow and arrow, which is believed to have appeared in North America at a later time. Early Ocean Bay used microblades set in slots along the sides of slender unbarbed bone points, and these points could have been arrow heads. A microblade is a thin, very regular, narrow (quarter inch or less) elongate flake with straight razor-sharp edges produced by controlled kapping techniques from specially prepared small blocks or cores of stone. Microblades formed ready-to-use cutting edges for small tools, and points. Those found on Kodiak and Afognak are 5000 years old and older. It is not known what kind of game these points were used on, but they are sufficiently abundant that they likely were used on sea mammals. Otherwise, they would have been for defence and aggression against other people and possibly bears. There also is evidence for the early use of spear throwers in the form of throwing board pegs recovered by P. Hausler-Knecht from the Rice Ridge site located near Chiniak. Later, in Kachemak times, toggle harpoon heads and additional styles of non-toggling heads appeared. Part of the necessary equipment for hunting at sea was a waterproof parka (kamleika). No garments have been recovered from local archaeological digs, but numerous delicate eyed needles that would have served for sewing water repellent gear were recovered at the Rice Ridge and from Kachemak sites. Other Ocean Bay implements included stone lamps, small adze bits, fish hooks, cobble spalls which were used as knives and scrapers for hides and also for sawing slate, and the occasional large grooved cobble probably used for sinking a line to the floor of the ocean. The earliest lamps were long, narrow and pointed at one end and had deep bowls. Early in Ocean Bay I large parallel-sided flakes, almost shaped like prisms, termed “blades,” were used as blanks for the production of stone tools. Blade technology was a carryover from the earlier Paleo-Arctic era on mainland Alaska and Siberia, as also were the slotted bone points armed with inset microblades. About 6000 or 6500 years ago bone working techniques were adapted to fashioning slate. Thenceforth ground slate tools partially replaced flaked flint (chert) tools and later, in Ocean Bay II times, slate grinding became the main means of working stone. Mainly pointed implements were produced in slate. Most of them followed the elongate tapered outline of sawn slate strips or blanks but some were copies of flaked chert tools. Some of the long stemmed points are truly like bayonets. Many ground slate blades bear fine edge serrations or tiny barbs and cut-line decorations on the faces. It is not clear that the cut lines were purely non-functional. They could they have held poison or facilitated bleeding. The crescentic knife, commonly known by the Eskimo term "ulu" was absent until the very end of Ocean Bay times. Cutting and butchering was done with double-edged blades shaped somewhat like large lance blades. Development of the ground slate industry provides a case example of innovation in which technology for sawing, scraping and finishing bone and antler implements was transferred to slate. This development can be seen as being related to hunting on the water where there is less danger of breaking brittle points and to the local availability of slate. Significantly, the first use for ground slate on Afognak was for projectiles and pointed implements. Settlements at the mouth of the Afognak River contributed significantly to the development of Ocean Bay technology, especially the invention of ground slate tools. This development then spread eastward from Kodiak to Southeastern Alaska. For the best definition of Ocean Bay it is necessary to look to a site on Kodiak, Rice Ridge located near Chiniak, which has preserved bone artifacts and bones from the game caught, unlike the Afognak River sites where only stone has survived.. Ocean Bay people were fond of red ochre with which they liberally dusted the floors of their houses. The largest artifacts found there are large flat stones, resembling metates, for grinding red ochre. Excavations have only partially uncovered Ocean Bay houses. Rice Ridge seems to have had rectangular floors at least 12 by 18 feet in extent. Late Ocean Bay deposits there also revealed a dug-in or semisubterranean circular house at least 12 feet in diameter. A relatively small subrectangular depression on the river at Litnik appears to be an Ocean Bay house judging from the presence of a deep red ochre streak, probably the house floor. This feature shows that dug-in houses, often thought to have been the snug winter mode, also were built for summer use. Evidence for substantial housing also comes from the Slate site, AFG 011, at the Afognak River, though the details are fragmentary. Here, boulders had been used in the construction. Numerous irregular stone blocks of various sizes occurred in swath 18 feet wide. These probably are from a tumbled house or two, the front edge(s) of which were lost to bank erosion. The stones were greatly disturbed from the original construction. Some lay more or less atop others but not as a solid, coursed wall. Over about half the area of this feature an orange-brown volcanic ash that underlay the occupation had been removed down to glacial till, probably for a house pit. Inside, two stone lamps were found next to three post holes. Many volcanic ashes fell after the glaciers melted, until about six or seven thousand years ago, forming the thick brown, orange and yellow bands sometimes referred to as "butter-clay." More ash or "tephras" also fell later. Early Ocean Bay settlements often lay directly atop the butter-clay deposit which frequently provides an imprint of post holes and ancient house pits. Volcanic ash layers found higher up in the deposits can be used to help date and correlate sites. Finally, the highest layer, the Katmai-Novarupta ash of 1912 that thickly overlies all Afognak sites can be credited with protecting the surfaces. Continuing exploration has resulted in the discovery of a substantial number of Ocean Bay settlements, many of them overlain by Kachemak tradition occupations. After making reasonable allowance for the progressive loss of sites through erosion it thus is likely that there were about as many settlements during Ocean Bay times as there were during succeeding Kachemak times. Arctic Small Tool Tradition KACHEMAK TRADITION, 1900 BC to 1200 AD Kachemak origins are poorly documented, but surface collections and test pits made at site AFG 088 located at the mouth of the Afognak River have yielded a series of tools that show technological and stylistic continuity with late Ocean Bay. The tool set also contains artifacts lacking in Ocean Bay but found in Early Kachemak (details are in Appendix II). Evidence for an Ocean Bay-Kachemak transition includes slate tools made by the distinctive sawing and scraping technique of Ocean Bay, in some cases also duplicating Ocean Bay styles. Some tools also continued to be flaked from chert (flint) which had been the dominate tool making mode of early Ocean Bay times. Little-modified stone slabs, bars, cobbles and small boulders also were used extensively for fish line and net weights, for very large hide scrapers, and as material blanks for stone lamps, cobble spall tools, mauls and ochre grinders, and for grooved cobble weights. Early Kachemak made much greater use of grooved cobble and notched pebble weights than Ocean Bay for fishing lines and nets. Labrets were now adopted on Kodiak. The custom of wearing lip plugs may have reached Kodiak from Southeast Alaska and British Columbia, a region commonly referred to as the Northwest Coast, or from Siberia. The broad, single-edged, ground slate semilunar knife or ulu, a hallmark of Eskimos, became common. Toggle harpoon heads appeared on Kodiak and also in other areas of Alaska and British Columbia at this time. If they have any one point of origin it has not yet been determined. This addition to hunting technology is of especial interest considering that Ocean Bay sea mammal hunters had flourished for 3000 years without toggling harpoons. (Toggling harpoons completely penetrate through the hide of an animal, and then, due to the design of the device, turn sideways, like a button securely in its hole.) The dead often were interred within occupied settlements, keeping the deceased as members of the community. Incomplete burials and scattered human bones are startlingly abundant in Kachemak refuse deposits. The bones often show cut marks and breaks or have been made into artifacts. Some were drilled for attachment or suspension. At one site sections of jaw with two and three teeth had been cut out of the skull and ground to an even surface across the front of the teeth. Cut marks on some bones may be from ritual dismemberment. These occurrences have generated considerable discussion of a Kachemak mortuary complex on Kodiak Island and at Kachemak Bay, and also of possible cannibalism. There are flexed single burials, which are the norm, and mass graves but extended burial was rare. Mass burials were interpreted by Hrdlicka as evidence of massacres. One grave at the Uyak site contained parts of 18-20 individuals described by Robert Heizer as “skeletons piled indiscriminately; skeletons incomplete. Probably secondary reburial. Long bones split (for marrow?)” (Heizer 1956: Archaeology of the Uyak Site). Current thought is that the mass graves are mortuary crypts that were reopened from time to time to add more bodies (sometimes disturbing earlier burials in the process). Human bones encountered during house construction and possibly "rehabilitated" mummies and trophies that no longer were wanted also were added. Other mortuary elements include and an eagle skeleton as grave goods, artificial eyes placed in the skull, extra skulls or trophies in the grave, and at Kachemak Bay a clay mask. Altogether, Kachemak treatment of the dead and use of human remains was varied, extensive and sometimes bizarre. Later, Koniag burial customs also emphasised interment in occupied and abandoned sites or house pits, though cairn burial and disposition in rock crevices also was practiced (Ocean Bay burial practices are unknown). Exotic goods were obtained through trade. One or more Late Kachemak houses excavated by Amy Steffian at the Uyak site appear to have been home workshops for producing jet (coal) ornaments, particularly labrets. The raw material probably came from the adjacent mainland. Many elements of Kachemak technology, as well as tool styles and ornaments, are identical to those of the 2000-year-old ancestral Eskimo Norton culture of the Bering Sea region. Norton and Kachemak people probably visited across the Alaska Peninsula for trade and held “invitational feasts” and may have intermarried. Thus ancient Afognak was part of the broader community of ancestral Yupik Eskimo peoples. There is little information on complete Early Kachemak houses. Most of them probably did not differ greatly from single-room Late Kachemak houses. At the Old Kiavak site, located southwest of Old Harbor, a trench intersected a 23-foot-long house pit (possibly including entryway). Three possible Early Kachemak houses uncovered during Hrdlicka's Uyak Site excavations, as reported by Heizer, were single rectangular rooms slightly dug into the ground, measuring from about 8 feet square up to 13 by 16.5 feet. In each there was a stone slab fireplace. Excavations at the Bliski site on Near Island by the Alutiiq Museum uncovered part of a floor dated to about 3000 years ago. The complete structure possibly was subrectangular and may have measured about 18 feet across. It is identified as a semisubterranean house, dug into the ground almost a foot and a half and probably covered with sod or thatch. The best data for Late Kachemak houses are from the Uyak site near Larsen Bay. Heizer reported small single-room rectangular houses plus a circular one about 28 feet in diameter. Steffian's houses, from new excavations at the Uyak site, show entry passages half to fully the length of the rest of the house which was rectangular with a central stone slab hearth. The single rooms tend to be 13 feet square and have floor-level entrance passages. Part of a house of similar format was uncovered by the 1999 excavations at the Aleut Town site. At the Afognak River there are some single- and two-room rectangular house pits showing on the surface that appear to be Late Kachemak or just past Early Kachemak in age. Unlike the Uyak site houses, these do not have entry passages. The Afognak data show that Kachemak people built relatively permanent semisubterranian houses at their summer settlements. Many Kachemak houses had clay-lined containers and pits built into the floor (illustrated in the books by Hrdlicka and by Heizer). This pattern is repeated on Afognak judging from a clay-lined pit seen at the Aleut Town site erosion exposure in 1964. The uses to which these pits were put it not clear, but they obviously relate to food preparation and storage. The pits evidently relied on the ability of clay to keep water in or air out. Curing of fish and meats under anaerobic (airless) conditions comes to mind as a possible use, otherwise wooden boxes and baskets would have sufficed. KONIAG TRADITION, AD 1200 TO HISTORIC ALUTIIQ From historical ethnographies and collections dating back to the last decades of the 1700s, and from the remarkable recovery of ceremonial objects and other wooden artifacts from late-dating “wet” (waterlogged) sites, the Native people of the Kodiak Archipelago are among the better documented North American groups. Koniag tradition remains of the 600 years preceding the historic period are closely linked to the people whom the Russians subjugated. This contact, which the explorers documented, is the starting point for backstreaming or extending the historic identification of peoples back in time. It becomes more difficult to identify the carriers of Kachemak culture as Koniags or ancestral Alutiiqs, though that seems to be the case at least in part as there is a certain degree of continuity between the Koniag and Kachemak traditions. It is much more tenuous to identify the Ocean Bay people of 7000 years ago as ancestral Koniags (hence ancestral Alutiiqs), but again there is some cultural continuity between Ocean Bay and Kachemak 3800 years ago. Throughout time there may have been additions to the original population, but there is no firm evidence for complete population replacement at any time by conquest and migration. The Koniag or Qikertarmiut (Island) Eskimos, among whom can be counted the Alutiiq ancestors of the Afognak islanders, numbered about 8000 at time of Russian conquest in 1784. However, the existence of many large abandoned second millennium AD archaeological sites throughout the archipelago suggests that there may have been even more people earlier. Alutiiq hunting techniques were so well adapted that they continued in use after European contact in order to meet the requirements of the fur trade and colonial subsistence, as also did Alutiiq settlement pattern. Much of Koniag technology was similar to that of the preceding Kachemak tradition, though there was ongoing development. As well, some of the tools now used on Kodiak are stylistically similar to ones used along the Bering Sea coast. The meaning of this has been the subject of scholarly debate. It is debated whether there was a major migration from the mainland or southern Bering Sea to Kodiak. Nevertheless, the Koniag archaeologic and ethnographic culture has come to resemble in many specific ways that of Bering Sea Eskimos while also exhibiting relationships to Aleutian Islanders and Northwest Coast peoples. As well, some Koniag features also are highly distinctive to the Pacific Coast and in this manner placed the early Native inhabitants of Afognak apart from more northerly speakers of Eskimo languages. These features include, for instance, petroglyphs, long slender ground slate whaling dart tips employed in a method of whaling very different from Eskimo harpooning, probable mummification and spruce root basketry. Although the Koniag tradition is confined to the brief period of 600 years prior to European contact, plus a post-contact phase, there also was a Kachemak-Koniag transitional stage of perhaps two centuries duration. Change from Kachemak to Koniag, though not necessarily sudden, was more than a subtle transition. Almost everything that was Late Kachemak changed in the succeeding Koniag tradition during the centuries 1000 to 1300 A.D. In many cases these changes were compatible with the earlier lifeways and technology to which they were additions (or deletions) or simply minor shifts in styles. Nevertheless, some changes have major implications for social institutions and regional interactions. Pottery, for example, appeared locally but never became adopted on all parts of Kodiak and is missing from Afognak. This distribution demonstrates the variability that existed among the Koniags who probably were not a single, unitary tribe. An important addition to the tool inventory was the heavy grooved splitting adze. This implement is especially common on Afognak, and also at Prince William Sound, and might be correlated with the need for split wood to heat rocks for the now very popular sweat bath. In the Koniag tradition there also is much greater evidence for heavy woodworking than there was in earlier times. Planing adze bits became one of the most abundant tools. Often they were converted into hammerstones after being damaged but sometimes they are found in perfect condition. Nevertheless, whalebone wedges for splitting wood were very common in the Kachemak tradition at the Aleut Town site, so possibly mainly a shift in techniques for processing wood is involved. Late in time the Koniags obtained or made a few tools pounded from native copper, a material traded from the mainland to the northeast. There is speculation that they also had iron. Although a few bone hafts seem to show rust stains, no iron has been recovered. Metal was carefully conserved, thus it is rare in archaeological sites. The most fascinating artifacts are pebbles upon which stylized human faces have been scratched. Often the figurines are clothed. A few, hold a hoop rattle and thus provide suggestive clues that the figurines portray dancers at festivals. But they are found at both main or winter sites and summer salmon fishing camps, so their use was not limited to winter festivals. They appear mainly in Koniag times but the ritual for which thousands of these figures were produced and discarded at Settlement Point and other sites located around Marmot Bay and elsewhere appears to have lapsed a approximately a century before the Russians arrived. But first, the concept was copied by ancestral Tlingit Indians at Yakutat. This provides a clue that relationships around the Gulf of Alaska were not always hostile and that Alutiiqs and Tlingit Indians interacted socially before the Russians arrived. A large Afognak Bay collection was recovered through controlled excavations at Settlement Point supervised by Patrick Saltonstall. Implements found there include bone arrows used to hunt birds, harpoon heads of both toggling and barbed non-toggling formats, fish hook shanks and barbs, notched cobble line weights, hones and whetstones, greenstone planing adze bits, elongate ground slate dart or spear heads with diamond cross section, ground slate ulus, labrets including some fashioned of ivory and jet, a rare tusk-shaped dentalium shell imported through middlemen from present British Columbia, stone lamps, and hundreds of incised pebble figurines. The spearheads with diamond cross section are a distinctive regional “horizon” style that spread quickly throughout the region from Prince William Sound to the western Alaska Peninsula early in the second millennium AD. The Koniags developed a complex rectangular house with a large central common room, nine yards square in one Settlement Point example, and with several appended side chambers. Each attached chamber was occupied by a family which cooked in the common room. One room was for the steam bath. In the early 19th century, a house had 18 to 20 occupants. Houses were dug into the ground (semisubterranean). Dwellings built in this manner may have been easier to heat and provided better protection against storms and cold than ones built fully above the surface. Koniag construction was of the post and beam mode. Posts were erected – low ones near the walls, higher posts near the center – then beams were strung from post to post. Split slabs of wood were leaned against or placed over the beams. These in turn were banked and covered with turf for insulation and thatched to shed water. Portions of the walls may have been built of stacked sods alone but they would have been faced with matting. Driftwood was the source for fuel and timber for construction. It must have been in short supply after local accumulations were used up following initial settlement of a locality. Floors were covered only with grass, and sometimes gravel, which was renewed from time to time. Dried food was stored inside the house, At Settlement Point there were large clay-lined storage or food preparation pits within the houses. Kachemak houses also had numerous clay-lined pits, but of smaller size. These large multifamily Koniag houses were very different from the small Late Kachemak houses. As Saltonstall expresses it, "Four hundred years prior to the occupation of Settlement Point, Alutiiq peoples lived in small (c. 20 square meters) single family dwellings. Yet when the Russians arrived in the late 1700’s they reported that the Alutiiq had chiefs, kept slaves and that several related families lived in one large (c. 60 square meters), multiple roomed house” (1977 report to Afognak Native Corporation). Pits from abandoned houses are large rectangles with one or two smaller subrectangular pits on the outside along each wall, joined to the main room by a short passage. The development of this type of Koniag house is poorly dated. Apparently it dates close to the beginning of the Koniag tradition, sometime between 900 and 1250 AD. Houses were heated from the earliest times (Ocean Bay) onward with interior hearths, which may have been used primarily for cooking. Stone lamps were for light, though they sometimes reached an impressive size of 100 pounds. There is a persistent story of a lamp on Afognak that is “too large to move." Lamps of this size would have served ritual and community needs. Larger Koniag houses, compared with Kachemak houses, are interpreted as evidence of population increase. The overwhelming abundance of complex Koniag-style housepits at salmon streams, such Portage River (Discoverer Bay, arm of Perenosa Bay), the Karluk River, Ayakulik River and elsewhere further suggests a population increase during Koniag times. The nine houses that comprised the Settlement Point village date to the three centuries immediately preceding about AD 1600 when the site was abandoned due to subsidence following a major earthquake. Some houses have multiple floors, indicating continued occupation after refurbishment. The floors consist of alternating layers of clean beach gravel and hard-packed housefloor. When the floor got too dirty with seal oil, food remains and charcoal the inhabitants recovered it with clean beach gravel and possibly also grass. Houses sometimes were rebuilt in place, establishing several centuries continuous occupation, at Karluk for instance. Excavations revealed holes from the many large posts required to support the roof. Each house had a hearth in the main room, contained within upright slate slabs. In some Settlement Point houses there are under the hearths pits full of charcoal and containing also fire-cracked rock. Saltonstall suggests that these may have been barbecue pits. To use them, meat would have been placed upon a bed of coals and heated rocks and then covered with soil or gravel to cook slowly. Each house pit at Settlement Point has between one and eight side rooms. Side-rooms were slightly higher than main room, and were entered through a hatch and tunnel dug down about 16 inches lower than the floor. This type of entry formed a cold trap to prevent cool air from flowing out of the central room into the side chambers. These rooms are small, about 10 feet square. Additional Koniag houses were partially revealed at Adze (AFG-012). One feature found there, but not at Settlement Point, is a stone-slab-covered sub-floor drain. A house pit had had been dug down to impervious glacial till, hence the need for the drain. Small boulders piled as many as five high, which probably were part of a wall, were seen at the eroded face at Adze. This wall is of especial interest inasmuch as stone construction like that has not been reported elsewhere for Koniag times. TABLE 1. MAJOR CHANGING TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS ON AFOGNAK Microblades x x x x x
Refuge islets and natural forts are especially interesting as evidence for increased population and warfare. The rocky headlands and cliff-bound islets of Kodiak provided many sites for such natural refuges, a settlement type initially identified in historical accounts. Houses on the refuge rocks were similar in plan and in interior layout to those of main villages, judging from Richard Knecht's excavation of Shelikhov's battle site at Sitkalidak Island. Most appear to be late-prehistoric Koniag, which accords well with hypotheses of the recent rise of warfare in the North Pacific region. However, very few refuge rocks have been investigated, most of them superficially. None has been found in Afognak Bay, but thus far there has not been adequate examination of potential “forts.” Appendix II describes all precontact archaeological settlement sites found in the vicinity of Afognak Bay. Here we will discuss them in a summary fashion. Danger Bay and eastward is outside the geographic scope of this section, as also are sites around Whale Island and any along Afognak Strait. There are about 29 settlement and camp sites around Afognak Bay (Table 2). Some are minor or now have been completely washed away, as the observations date back to 1951. Additional sites must have existed earlier, but now are totally lost from the record. Finally, some small sites likely remain to be discovered. We have divided the bay into inner and outer zones. The inner zone is, essentially the mouth of the Afognak River but includes also a shallow water site at the head of nearby Back Bay. People would have moved to the inner settlements in the late spring and summer to catch and process salmon. They could have remained there until December to catch silver salmon if other priorities did not draw them elsewhere. Between the peaks of the runs they would have had time to make equipment, hunt out on the outer bay and do other things. People also paddled or trekked out o the bay part way to gather shell fish, but it was not as convenient to do that from inner sites as it was from outer sites. During Koniag times a lot of effort must have been put in on making wooden equipment as adze bits are one of the most common artifacts found along the eroded shores of Litnik on the lagoon of the Afognak River. The inventory from the two Koniag sites there consists of 28.7 percent adzes (of which 8.9 % are splitting adzes). This exceeds the frequency of ulu blades (23.8%) which are one of the most important implements at a fishing camp. But in the Kachemak area of Litnik (exclusive of the Ocean Bay II-Kachemak transitional site AFO-088) the frequency of adzes (none of them splitting adzes) drops to 1.6 percent, though ulu blades also drop to a modest 10.5 percent. Cobble spalls seem also to have been used to process fish. The combined cobble spall and ulu blade frequency is nearly equal between the two occupations at 26.8 percent for the Koniag area and 23.4 percent for the Kachemak area. When winter came, the river and tidal estuary froze hard and some years snow accumulated deeply. The inner area was not a place to live during winter and early spring, so people spent most of the year at the outer sites. There are about thirteen inner sites, more or less, depending upon how one subdivides the line-up of camps around the mouth of the Afognak River, but two are historic. There are eighteen known outer sites though the original number must have been greater. Most outer sites belong to the late TABLE 2. ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES AT AFOGNAK BAY
To close in on the near past of the Alutiiq people of Afognak, the Koniag sites will be considered further. These number twelve sites, exclusive of three inner sites which are thought to be seasonal aspects of outer settlements. The twelve range in size from a single house to nine houses at Settlement Point. The 200-yard long site facing Kugilak Beach now has seven or more houses somewhat confused from secondary use for garden plots. Prior to extensive erosion there could have been many more house remains at this village. The Aleut Town site may also have been a substantial village, but house pits no longer are clear on the surface due to late historic occupation. Among the ten Koniag tradition sites of the outer area, some villages probably had been abandoned by the time others were occupied. Nevertheless it appears that more than one main settlement and also some of the small sites were inhabited concurrently. The site Adze has radiocarbon dates that place it within the time range of the nearby Settlement Point village. This poses questions as to how these villages were allied or cooperated to share game, fisheries, bird rookeries and driftwood in the relatively localized area of Afognak Bay, and whether they ever came together under a single leader for ceremonies, trading trips and war and defense. SUBSISTENCE ECONOMY Faunal analyses show that uniformity in subsistence through time was not the case. While one can assume that there was a tendency to utilize all available resources, availability may have varied from time to time and place to place and accounts state that there were preferences.. Sea otter may have been utilized as food mainly during the Ocean Bay tradition. They are said not to be very palatable. Fox bones are abundant in Kachemak tradition sites where this animal evidently was consumed for food. They also are variably present later in Koniag tradition refuse. Dog is moderately common in both Kachemak and Koniag deposits, and there also is some evidence that it was eaten (cut marks on bones, opened brain cases) though the abundant dog remains recovered from the Aleut Town midden at Afognak do not bear these indications. During much of prehistory the most commonly hunted sea mammals were porpoises, except at Aleut Town where porpoise is rare, and especially harbor seal. A small number of fur seals also were taken. Northern sea lion were hunted but, like whales, it is difficult to assess their importance because the meat may have been stripped from the bones at the kill site. The same applies to brown bears which were harvested to a limited extent, a limiting factor being the size of the bear population of no more than a few thousand animals for the entire archipelago. Some caribou meat was imported, especially by Koniag villages located on Shelikof Strait across from the Alaska Peninsula. The Koniags are known to have been avid whalers. This animal is accorded great importance in ethnographic accounts and the contribution of whale oil and meat to the diet reportedly was significant. Whale bones are found in sites of all periods and were modified to make implements from the earliest time onward. At contact and in early historic times whales were struck with long slate-tipped darts smeared with aconite poison. The poison destabilized the whale by crippling the flipper muscle, so the whale would drown (see Bisset ref.). Then it rose in a few days and started drifting. The long slate tips used on historic whaling darts have not been recovered from precontact archaeological deposits, but Koniag whaling ritual and ceremonialism are sufficiently imbedded in lore, art and customs that whaling obviously was indigenous, not a Russian introduction. The case for the surround method of hunting sea otters being indigenous requires further examination but that cannot be done here. In this technique, several hunters in kayaks surround and harass individual otters which seldom escape from being struck by a harpoon-dart or harpoon arrow. A number of wild plants and berries that were collected for food and medicines, but the quantitative measure of their contribution to nutrition before commercial foodstuffs became available has not been established. The Kamchatka or "chocolate" lily (Fritallaria, sarana), which has a bulb composed of rice-like granules, was harvested and stored under Russian direction. Earlier, Alutiiqs very likely did the same. Wild celery (cow parsnip Heracleum and Angelica) also was eaten, sometimes confused with water hemlock and thus only one time. Sour dock (Rumex) also bears mentioning. Two forms of cranberries, high bush and lingenberry are abundant and store well. The salmon berry, for which Kodiak is renowned, keeps poorly and, like most berries, is subject to poor crop years. It was eaten mainly in season. Historic accounts together with the range of archaeological fishing implements and layers of fish bones in ancient refuse dumps show that fishing was a major occupation. Detailed analyses of fish remains have not been published, but cod, sculpin, halibut and many species of smaller fish evidently were caught by hook and line or with nets and possibly also spears. At one site, at the head of Larsen Bay, David Yesner identified equal numbers of salmon and Pacific cod, and uncommon rockfish. Megan Partlow also found cod and salmon co-dominant at Settlement Point. Hypothetically, with adequate storage and preservation the salmon fishery could have fed an immense population on the Kodiak Archipelago. In 1995, a peak year, the catch of pink salmon in the Kodiak district was more than 30 million fish, to which several million salmon of other species can be added. But there are several reasons why it was neither practical nor possible for salmon alone to support a very large population. These include the occurrence of alternating good and poor years for pink salmon, longer cycles or trends of shifting abundance, and bad years for drying and preserving fish. There is also the danger of overfishing small streams and killing off the runs which would leave people dependent on access to the larger salmon streams. Moreover, it was critically important to balance the diet with foods other than fish and to provide proper nutrition throughout the year. Inasmuch as the land fauna and plant foods that would do this were inadequate on Kodiak, the need remained to round out the diet with sea mammals, especially their fats to meet the high energy demands of North Pacific sea hunters. Large amounts of shellfish also were eaten, judging from the volume of shell dumps. While shellfish provided variety and important minerals and trace elements and served as a mainstay when fish and other meat was in short supply, they are very low in calories. Fishing was done with hook or gorge and line in the sea, spears, nets, and with weirs in conjunction with spears or gaffs and possibly traps at salmon streams. Direct evidence for the use of nets consists primarily of numerous notched pebble sinkers found at some Kachemak sites, as at the mouth of the Afognak River, and of net floats found at Koniag wet sites. (There also are mesh gauges, but they could have been used to make bird nets as well as fishing nets.) Heavier notched and grooved cobbles were for weighting lines to fish in the sea. It also was possible to use unmodified cobbles for this purpose. Birds and fowl of almost every kind were utilized, primarily for food but also for skins for clothing, and for feathers and bills for ornamentation. A list of 49 species has been drawn up from the bird bones that Hrdlicka collected at the Uyak Site. Nearly everything found in the littoral zone, between high and low tide, was collected and eaten. Shell is a main component of midden deposits. Shell reflects subsistence more directly than other types of faunal refuse because virtually nothing is stripped away and left at the "kill site" (which is the beach), and consumption dared not be delayed long and usually was local. However, whole clams were taken inland to fishing camps, on Karluk Lake for instance. The main components of shell middens are blue mussel; clams, especially butter clams (Saxidomus) and cockles (Clinocardium) and a few "horse" clams (Spisula), littleneck clams (Prototheca), Maya, and Tellina; green sea urchins; the tiny periwinkle in immense numbers, and smaller amounts of "dog winkles" (Thais); large whelks (sea snails Neptunea); chitons; barnacles and limpets. Razor clams are found at only a few beaches and are rare in the middens. Octopus were caught but their remains do not survive. Proportions vary from site to site. Crab, of which there are several edible species in shallow and offshore waters and even on the flats at minus tide (especially Dungeness), is absent in the middens. Massive harvests of blue mussels, clams, periwinkles and green sea urchins often resulted in the formation of relatively pure layers of these species in the shell middens. Usually, though, there is a mix of assorted shellfish, fish bones, mammal bones, soil, and burned rock. The waters of Kodiak are highly susceptible to paralytic seafood poisoning or "red tide" which can be fatal when infested clams and mussels are eaten. Analyses are not available for Kachemak tradition middens at Afognak Bay. The 1999 collection from Aleut Town is of modest scope – insufficient for a comprehensive report – and to date has not been studied. We can note the mammal remains collected from the Crag Point site in 1964. Crag Point is located on Marmot Bay within sight of Afognak. For Late Kachemak times the following bones were found by D. Clark: Preliminary inspection of the Aleut Town collection indicates that dog is more common there but that porpoise is scarce, and as expected harbor seal and fox are abundant. Most of the fox mandibles bear cutting marks on the body and the upswept portion, termed "ascending ramus" by anatomist. The cuts probably indicating both careful skinning in order to recover the entire pelt and severance of the lower jaw and cranium. The reason for the latter operation has not been determined. All of the uncommon bear and sea otter bones at Crag Point (and also at Three Saints, another Kachemak site) were modified. They had been used for games (sea otter) and evidently for material for tools (bear). Those from Afognak remain to be examined. A small dog is represented among the Crag Point remains. Wm. Haag reported two sizes of dogs at the Uyak site, and Afognak Islanders probably also kept two types of dogs. Dog skulls found in 1999 at Aleut town are neither small nor are they as large as Eskimo dogs. [Note to editor: The nearest Koniag faunal analyses presently are for sites located near Old Harbor at Rolling Bay and Kiavak Bay. Reporting for Settlement Point is forthcoming in 1999 or 2000. The results should be incorporated into the present report before it goes to press.] Editorial note: Positioning of the petroglyph section to be determined. PETROGLYPHS The largest petroglyph site in the Kodiak region is at Cape Alitak where hundreds of figures are scattered over acres of smooth granitic rock surfaces. Several additional petroglyph localities have been found on Kodiak and Afognak. They usually consist of small clusters of figures and even isolated carvings. The sites are inconspicuous and easily overlooked, so additional localities may exist. The following ones are on Afognak: Discoverer Bay (Perenosa Bay) lagoon The figures at Marka Bay are located on seaward facing surfaces of a dike or seam igneous rock that, when it was molten, was forced into a crack in rocks of the slate-graywacke group. The dike is exposed on a boulder strewn shore that even before 1964 was submerged at high tide. The dike rises about two yards above beach level for about 20 yards, but petroglyphs are found along only part of it. They are very faint and only eight figures could be followed with clarity when the locality was recorded by Clark in 1964. Judging from additional unclear traces, at least 30 figures may have been present originally. The figures range in size from about 4 to 12 inches. This is small as far as some petroglyphs go, but the Lipsett Point and Afognak Village land Cape Alitak figures also are small, the latter, according to Heizer, ranging from 6 to 24 inches. Those at Marka Bay represent faces, whether human or mythical beings, whales, a dancing or drumming figure, and possibly a geometric sign. Two petroglyph panels were found in 1971 on an inclined slate outcrop facing upriver along the tidal reach of the Afognak River. The panels are separated by a fissure little more than a foot wide and may belong together. The larger panel is three feet wide and seven feet long. The petroglyphs consist of small weathered pecked cup-shaped depressions and sawn grooves. Many of the grooves appear to be random but they occur in swarms with a common orientation. There also are many four-, six- and eight-rayed stars formed by the intersection of short lines. One starred hexagon and a few rectangles complete the group. The pits or cups may not be of the same age as the sawn lines. Since other slate outcrops and some boulders were available at this locality for petroglyphs, it can be assumed that the person who made the cups was aware of the sawn glyps and combined the two purposefully (or the reverse). The cups show much greater weathering than the sawn lines, but their condition might be a factor of their having been made by percussion or fracturing and pulverizing the stone instead of sawing. A dike of igneous rock, similar to the one found at Marka Bay but less prominent, outcrops on the beach immediately inside Lipsett Point, well out from the upper edge of the shore. However, the shore has eroded and has shifted inland many yards since subsidence in 1964, with the consequent loss of a small Koniag site and historic garden plots. Part of a small badly eroded panel of petroglyphs has survived on an outward facing surface. The figures appear to be generally above tide water but are in the splash zone as a few barnacles are present. Part of this surface had fallen away in the past. Presently, three or four figures can be counted. The clearest ones are a face and a small dancing or drumming figure (an object held high by one arm could be either a drum or a ceremonial object). They were recorded by the Dig Afognak project in 1998. Outcrops of similar rock found along the western shore of Afognak Bay were examined but no additional petroglyphs were found. Afognak Village Just beyond the northeast end of Afognak village is a small panel of faces on a vertical seaward-facing surface of a graywacke ledge. Adjacent surfaces, equally suited for rock art, appear to have been ignored by the petroglyph mason. This published site is well known. The faces are wearing labrets, and thus may portray humans. The site remains generally above the level of high tide, though during one visit a few periwinkles were seen lodged in the facial grooves. Three types of petroglyphs are found on Afognak Island: (a) sawn lines and sawn geometric figures, (b) small cup-shaped depressions, and (c) pecked figures portraying mainly faces, full figures and whales or other sea mammals. All, to some degree, are compositions or parts of compositions rather than random occurrences. Thematically, the pecked figures show various topics at each site, but they are brought together and tightly localized in small areas. The limitation at each site to a cluster of a few figures seems to have been done on purpose and further suggests that each locality was conceptually unified. The Afognak River sawn glyph panel is another example of either a planned production or at least of respect for the work already present on the stone surface. None of the starred figures intersect. As well, no major long sawn line runs through any starred figure. The cup marks are another matter. They intercept or are intercepted by cut lines. Cup-shaped depressions, often confined to boulders, have a very widespread distribution in western North America. Often they are found at streams that carry runs of salmon. For the most part the diverse people who made these “cups” or pitted stones had no direct contacts between one another. Yet, we may wonder if they were not produced in response to some unidentified widely diffused pan-tribal belief. Purpose The geometric and simple linear shapes of the sawn glyphs differs from others, in part due to the limitation of using the sawing technique. The location of cup and sawn petroglyphs at the mouths of salmon streams suggests that they pertained to beliefs for welcoming, controling or propagating salmon. Other glyphs evidently were made to be seen from the sea, either by human travelers, sea animals or supernatural beings. Possibly they simply were markers that advertised ownership of fishing and hunting rights in up-bay areas, especially at the salmon streams. But alerting people from other areas to this fact could have been accomplished by more visible means. Instead, the messages of the figures may have been directed to beings in of the sea. Along with this possible function, their obscurity may have reinforced the establishment of an in-group, of people who shared the esoteric knowledge of where to find the glyphs, traveled and saw and touched them, and returned home empowered, like members of a secret fraternity. The mix of motifs consisting of symbols, of faces which in many cases show human attributes, the presence of dancing persons or drummers, common to Marka Bay, Lipsett Point and Cape Alitak, and also of whales shows that the story or message communicated through these sets of carvings was complex and detailed. Whale figures most certainly pertained to whales or whaling, and dancers and drummers may signify ceremonies and welcoming, but the meanings of symbols are more obtuse. Desson in her dissertation, for instance, points out that a circle painted on the prow of a whale hunter’s kayak was in fact a “trap” that worked like the trap formed by dragging a pouch of fat extracted from a human corpse across the mouth of a bay within which the whale had been struck. Age A small painted box panel from the Karluk wet site has a face similar to the Afognak Village faces with lines extending downward from the eyes. The Karluk specimen dates to the centuries just before Russian contact. Such eye motifs also are found sometimes on Alutiiq masks and on small squatting-man figurines for hunting hats common to the Koniag archaeological phase of the second millennium AD. The Marka Bay site was submerged at high tide even before the land sank in 1964. Thus, that locality probably had been subject to relatively rapid erosion, which is not favorable for petroglyphs to last very long. Following a major earthquake about 1150 AD, all the Afognak petroglyphs likely were submerged, at least at high tide. Later, the land rebounded, but during the interval of subsidence and heightened erosion is possible that all petroglyphs existing at that time were severely eroded. Accordingly, those seen now could postdate 1150 AD according to geologist Gary Carver. CONCLUDING CONSIDERATIONS As a consequence of this mode of living at the edge of the sea, the unstoppable process of coastal erosion has washed away most of the archaeological record that once existed on Afognak. The short-term effect of tidal waves in 1964 was to tear out chunks of some sites and redeposit sediments from shallow bays atop sites at the heads of inlets, but the effects of the land dropping six feet were much more drastic. At high tide waves ate away at sites, opening them to erosion and cutting back their margins. Some sites were reduced by two or three yards, others were more extensively eroded and some were completely obliterated. But now, with the beaches and littoral zone being lower, larger waves ran up onto the shore, shoving sand, gravel and cobbles inward to the upper beach limit, sometimes overriding the old edge of the shore and creating new storm berms. Later, during the years after subsidence the land gradually rebounded, for example, thus far regaining about half the elevation lost at Afognak Bay in 1964. The shores are being restored to a seemingly pristine condition and the only clues to what had transpired are, temporarily, the dead trees that rise from the tidal zone and from the new storm berms. There also is the permanent record of deposits from tidal waves that can be “read” by the prying eyes of geologists. But there is one difference: the remains of once mighty village sites and midden mounds and rows of old house pits are gone, except sometimes for their inner fringes. A newcomer sees the land as if they never had existed. This is what happened to many sites after 1964. Similar events occurred in the past, leaving, after rebound, reconstituted shores and beaches minus older deposits and sites, and we do not see the land as it once existed. Geologists have read clues, though, that the last major pre-1964 event of this kind was about 1150 AD. As part of the past experiences of Afognak Islanders, earthquakes and tidal waves also posed a threat to living communities. But it is not known that they had any disastrous effects on the inhabitants, though these events probably damaged their houses, destroyed their equipment and provisions, and made it necessary to relocate some villages. LINKS TO THE HISTORIC ALUTIIQ OF AFOGNAK Interestingly, too, Davydov equated Igvetsk artel to Afognak in 1802. Was this locality actually Afognak village at that time? Unfortunately none of the early records that use place names give exact locations. Igvetsk is an inflected form of Igvak which is an alternate name for the artel or locality Kataaq. Igvak means "a step across." We infer that to mean that it was located across from some significant place of reference, e.g., the odinochka or Aleut village at Afognak. "Igvik" or "Igwik" also occurs on an 1804 settlement list reported by Gideon which originally may have been compiled by Baranov or Bolotov in 1795 (research by Lydia Black). It appears, thus, that there were interacting communities on Afognak Bay as early as 1795. At least one of them, actually published in 1787, was Alutiiq. KACHEMAK AND THE KONIAG ROOTS OF ALUTIIQ CULTURE HISTORY OF FIELD EXPLORATION Serious attention was first given to the archaeology of Kodiak Island in 1931. In that year Ales Hrdlicka of the Smithsonian Institution began several years of excavations and thus became the father of Kodiak prehistoric studies. Though his excavation methods were crude, he wrote a daily tale of discovery which made his book, The Anthropology of Kodiak Island popular among the public. This report devoted largely to the Uyak or "Our Point" site at Larsen Bay also was carefully scrutinized by archaeologists, for Hrdlicka’s contested interpretations set the primary research question for the next generation of prehistorians. Hrdlicka did not visit Afognak, but while he was at Kodiak he polled local persons for information and obtained reports of old village sites at Afognak Village, Litnik, Settlement Point, Little Afognak and MacDonald Lagoon. After the excavations at Larsen Bay, there was a lull in archaeological work on Kodiak. The next sustained digs were those of the University of Wisconsin Aleut-Konyag Project in 1961 through 1964. This project focused largely on the southeast part of Kodiak but included also small-scale excavations near Crag Point situated at the entrance to Anton Larsen Bay and a reconnaissance of Marmot Bay by skiff in 1964 to examine sites damaged by tidal waves and erosion by the sea. A number of these sites had been recorded previously by D. Clark who had traveled in the area in 1951. Major aspects of the prehistory of Kodiak Island still remained poorly known, and since 1964 this gap in knowledge has stimulated been many archaeological projects on Kodiak and Afognak. In 1971 D. Clark and William Workman, of the Canadian Museum of Civilization and Alaska Methodist University respectively, excavated deposits of the earliest known peoples in the area, the Ocean Bay culture tradition at two sites located at the mouth of the Afognak River. There was a pause in field work until 1977 when a continuing series of more or less unrelated government agency surveys and excavations began. In 1983 Richard Jordan and his students, from Bryn Mawr College and later the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, organized the Kodiak Archaeological Project which through 1987 focused on excavations at Karluk, the Uyak site near Larsen Bay and Crag Point. Most of the rather numerous subsequent projects on Kodiak can be traced to personnel introduced to the island by this project. A list of excavations can be found in the Clark 1995 publication. To this list we can add test excavations done on Shuyak Island by Binghamton University, New York, and by the State Office of Historic Preservation as followup checks for any damage by the EXXON Valdez oil spill. Recent work done on southern Afognak Island includes two-years of excavation at Malina Creek in 1992 and 1993 by Richard Knecht, then with the Kodiak Area Native Association (KANA), supported by the Afognak Native Corporation; an excavation at a Koniag (ancestral Alutiiq) village at Settlement Point during 1994-1997 by Patrick Saltonstall; excavation of historic Kataaq or Katanee by Katharine Woodhouse-Beyer in 1994-1998 and minor investigations at the mouth of the Afognak River by D. Clark in 1995-1997. The last three projects were part of the Afognak Native Corporation Dig Afognak program. Additional surveys, especially by Steffian and Saltonstall, have continued to provide information as recently as 1998. In addition, there exist restricted files and videotapes from the EXXON Valdez oil spill cleanup. In 1999 the Aleut Town site, located at the northerly end of Afognak Village, was tested for the Native Village of Afognak by the Afognak Native Corporation. A four by six meter block was excavated to the base of the site under the direction of D.W. Clark. Deposits from a Kachemak tradition occupation were encountered below historic American period occupation. This had been preceded in 1997 by a one-meter-square exploratory test pit excavated by Katharine Woodhouse-Beyer to the base of the site and nearby another test square taken part way to the base by Robert Koperl with an emphasis on sampling fish remains in the midden. APPENDIX II SITES AT AFOGNAK BAY This appendix describes all precontact archaeological settlement sites found in the vicinity of Afognak Bay. The four known petroglyph sites are described elsewhere. The full site list is given with the intent of conveying a feeling for the magnitude of ancestral Alutiiq use of the area, even though many sites have been eradicated by erosion. The area of Danger Bay and eastward is outside the geographic scope of this section, and sites around Whale Island, along Afognak Strait and around Little Raspberry Island are not discussed due to lack of information. The Appendix starts with inner sites; elsewhere Table 2 lists the sites in the order of their State of Alaska numeric code designation. The distinction between outer sites and river estuary or inner sites is in part based on the potential of the latter for salmon fishing but also the fact that the formation of thick ice late in the winter which would have made the river estuary seasonally unfavorable for occupation. The Afognak River Complex Salmon Weir Vicinity, AFG 211, AFG 212 There may also be older occupation in this vicinity. On lower ground at the upstream end of the “Lagoon vicinity,” on the north side, there are a number of shallow single-room depressions. It was not clear that these were house depressions until a test pit placed in one of them in 1997 revealed at some depth an apparent floor streak. No artifacts were recovered. The "Lagoon" Vicinity, AFG 009 & AFG 213 Common artifacts include slate ulu blade fragments, large heavy splitting adzes, smaller planing adze bits, notched cobble sinkers, and ground slate points. Most locations around the lagoon appear to have seen a single episodes of occupation judging from the fact that shovel probes in the floors of two houses, one on each side of the river, failed to reveal any underlying refuse deposits. But along the shoreline in one area there is a five-foot thick accumulation consisting mainly of fire-cracked rock. The Kachemak Tradition Vicinity, AFG 010, AFG 088, AFG 214, AFG 215 AFG-214 and 215 are upstream from AFG-088 (below) on the same side of the river, and consist respectively of a cluster of Kachemak house pits next to AFG-088 and then varied but sometimes sparse traces of occupation on up the river towards the bridge abutments. Artifacts from other, mainly Late Kachemak, areas, especially AFG-010, include numerous small notched pebble net sinkers, ground slate projectile points and double-edged knives or lance blades, small knives, points and scrapers flaked from red chert, cobble spall scrapers, large scrapers flaked from slate, ground slate ulu blades, stone lamps, cobble mauls, grooved cobbles, and a few greenstone planing adze bits. Heavily forested AFG-088 was collected along the eroding shore in 1971. At that time it seemed that evidence of both Late Ocean Bay (OB II) and Kachemak occupation was present. With this possibility in mind Clark and Dig Afognak staff returned to the site during the 1990s, made further collections from the shore and excavated three test pits. Stone artifacts of Ocean Bay II and Kachemak tradition types were found together at the same depth in the stony site deposit. Hence, it is unlikely that the site contains mixed material from two cultures of differing divergent ages. Instead, it is transitional with the characteristics of both. Three radiocarbon dates, of between 3000 and 3800 years ago, were obtained through the financial support of the Canadian Museum of Civilization. These dates fit the interpretation of a transition from Ocean Bay II to the Kachemak tradition. A fourth test pit excavated at the erosion exposure in 1999 by G. Carver and Clark also revealed an additional lower layer that may be older and Ocean Bay in affiliation. Further excavation is required to determine if that is the case. The site is nearly 90 yards long, though possibly the full extent was not occupied at any one time. Like the other Kachemak salmon fishing camps, activity such as rigging nets and cleaning salmon took place on the shore and banks within a few yards of the water. Hence, the erosion that has taken place through the ages and especially after 1964 has washed many stone artifacts in the shore gravels. Implements found here include very numerous notched stone net weights of a size conspicuously larger than Late Kachemak net sinkers, large ovoid cobble mauls, grooved cobbles, cobble spall tools, a few flaked red chert points and small knives, planing adze bits, numerous ground slate ulu blades and also ground slate projectile points and double-edged knife or lance blades, a stone lamp and an ochre grinder hand stone. Much of the slate work was done according to techniques and styles characteristic of the antecedent Ocean Bay tradition. The Ocean Bay Culture Vicinity The Ocean Bay Slate Site, AFG 011 People apparently stayed at his location to catch and process salmon, but the site also was a tool factory. With free time between salmon runs and a good local source of slate, the Ocean Bay people took the opportunity the make large numbers of sawn slate tool blanks as well as finished ground knives and lance or spear points. The number of tools and blanks produced was far in excess of immediate needs. The surplus undoubtedly was intended for use elsewhere during the year and for trade to other communities who did not have access to good slate. Many cobble spalls that had been used to saw and scrape the slate prior to finishing it with whetstones also were found on the site. It appears that chert flaking had almost died out as a manufacturing technique at this locality, but was revived to some extent in late Ocean Bay II times and it continued thus during Kachemak times. Ocean Bay Chert Site, AFG 008 In addition to often roughly prepared chert knives, the so-called Chert site also had numerous finer projectile points flaked from chert and also basalt, ground slate points similar to those found at the Slate site, ochre grinders, microblade cores and a few prismatic blades, a few adze bits, split cobbles used as choppers, and chert flake scrapers. Estuary Islet Site AFG 216 Cape Kazakof Site AFG-235 Marka Bay East Entrance AFG-236 Point Inside Marka Bay AFG-237 Marka Bay Inner Site AFG- Marka Bay West Outer Site AFG-020 Kugilak (Driftwood Beach), AFG 016 Testing in 1999 examined the question of whether the depressed rectangular plots were gardens, house pits or both. We have already noted evidence confirming that they were gardens. Because of the enriched soil, old sites are favored locations for gardens. Clearing of stones, and especially removal of the volcanic ash that fell in 1912 has converted the garden plots into rectangular depressions. However, the depressions at Kugilak are much deeper than garden plots found elsewhere in the Kodiak region – up to six feet deep. The alternative interpretation examined then is that Koniag house depressions had been converted into garden plots. However, the lack of appended rooms, e.g., "octopus" houses, and the large size of some depressions created problems with that interpretation. An exploratory slit trench dug into the berm between two depressions, and a test pit at the rear edge of one of the same depressions, encountered a natural sequence of midden and sand layers. These are the layers one would expect to be formed next to a house when the occupants threw out trash and storms blew sand in from the beach. The berms are not secondary accumulations formed from clearing stones out of garden plots. We also verified that there is at least one appended room at the deepest depression, though it is not as deep as the main pit. Sand blown in from the beach may have filled in other sunken side-rooms. As well, once a house was built, continuing increments of sand from the shore and trash from the occupation could have left the house progressively deeper in the ground. When it eventually was abandoned and collapsed the pit left was deeper than the original depression Settlement Point, AFG 015 Posliedni Point, AFG 014 "Adze" Site, AFG 012 The collection is fairly substantial and includes ground slate ulu fragments, a leafshaped blade flaked from slate, two barbed ground slate spear points of the of an elongate diamond cross section – a type that is characteristic of the early Koniag tradition and of Settlement Point, boat- shaped ground slate end blades for projectiles, various notched cobble weights, many planing adzes, splitting adzes, incised slate figurines, a fine jet labret, bone harpoon head fragments and stone lamps. The site is about 40 yards long and 6.5 feet to 8 feet deep and 20 yards wide (as of 1971). In 1951 additional thinner deposits also were exposed in the low bank at the forested up-bay end of the site but were washed away many years ago. Although the main site is perched atop a till deposit and bedrock, erosion had occurred sometime prior to 1951 and was renewed in 1964. In 1971, when the site was next visited, the entire front consisted of a fresh erosion exposure, but it was not cut back far before it stabilized and the exposure became revegetated. The deeper deposits contained considerable rotten wood, grass and other packed vegetal matter. The grass apparently is an accumulation of compacted floor dressings that was preserved because of the anaerobic or air-free environment created by the wetness of the bottom layers. A house pit had been excavated through the accumulated deposit of soil and old volcanic ash down to impervious clayey glacial till. To drain the house a small ditch had been dug across the floor and was covered with flagstones. AFG 012’s Neighbor, AFG 013 Head of Back Bay AFG-225 Just a House, AFG 007 Midden Trace Afognak Village No. 1, AFG 002 Afognak Village No. 2, AFG 003 Traces of midden were still to be seen at the eroding bank, for about the same distance, in 1999. The thickness and integrity of midden layers could not be assessed without making a test exposure because the upper edge of the bank was vegetated and the surface appears to been disturbed by machinery in recent years. A large active garden plot begins about 10 yards in from the edge of the bank. Only scattered patches of shell midden and fire-cracked rock are exposed in the field. Artifacts brought up by the plough include some large iron objects and ceramic sherds from the late American period. Nothing was seen exposed on the rain-washed soil suggestive of the Russian period or of the remains of an odinochka. Nevertheless, this terrain and ground extending southward from it for 100 yards remains a plausible site of the odinochka. Afognak Village No. 3, AFG 004 In 1999 a four by five meter block was excavated to the base of the site by the Afognak Native Corporation for the Native Village of Afognak and an additional one by two meter pit was excavated. Late American period artifacts were recovered from above and below the 1912 volcanic ash. Very few early American period and no Russian period artifacts were recovered. The bulk of the deposit consisted of Kachemak midden and features. Hardly any Koniag tradition artifacts were recovered. In 1951 and 1964 Clark collected a small number of artifacts indicating Kachemak tradition occupation followed by Koniag deposits of fire-cracked rock. It is possible that Koniag tradition deposits were localized at the seaward side of the site that subsequently was lost to erosion. Items recovered in 1999 include numerous bone wedges, labrets, fish hook parts, numerous barbed harpoon heads, miscellaneous ornaments including probable nose pins, slate ulu blades, heavy bar-shaped abraders, natural pumice and scoria lump abraders, birdbone awls, fragments of bone arrow heads and spear prongs, ground slate spear tips, curiosities such as a "rock oyster" shell and a flake of yellow chert, and a single adze bit from upper levels that may be from the Koniag occupation. Part of a Kachemak house also was uncovered. There was a small grooved cobble maul but no grooved fish line weights. Graveyard Point Lipsett Point, AFG-005 © 2005 Native Village of Afognak 204 E. Rezanof, Ste. 100, Kodiak, Alaska 99615 907-486-6357 • www.afognak.org |