This is a multidisciplinary study of the early contact period of Alaskan Native history that follows a major hunting and fishing Inupiaq group at a time of momentous change in their lifeways. The Amilgaqtau yaagmiut were the most powerful group in the Kobuk River area. But their status was forever transformed thanks to two major factors. They faced a food shortage prompted by the decline in caribou, one of their major foods. This was also the time when European and Asian trade items were first introduced into their traditional society. The first trade items to arrive, a decade ahead of the Europeans themselves, were glass beads and pieces of metal that the Inupiat expertly incorporated into their traditional implements. This book integrates ethnohistoric, bio-anthropological, archaeological, and oral historical analyses.
This is a multidisciplinary study of the early contact period of Alaskan Native history that follows a major hunting and fishing Inupiaq group at a time of momentous change in their lifeways. The Amilgaqtau yaagmiut were the most powerful group in the Kobuk River area. But their status was forever transformed thanks to two major factors. They faced a food shortage prompted by the decline in caribou, one of their major foods. This was also the time when European and Asian trade items were first introduced into their traditional society. The first trade items to arrive, a decade ahead of the Europeans themselves, were glass beads and pieces of metal that the Inupiat expertly incorporated into their traditional implements. This book integrates ethnohistoric, bio-anthropological, archaeological, and oral historical analyses.
Life at Swift Water Place: Northwest Alaska at the Threshold of European Contact
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This is a multidisciplinary study of the early contact period of Alaskan Native history that follows a major hunting and fishing Inupiaq group at a time of momentous change in their lifeways. The Amilgaqtau yaagmiut were the most powerful group in the Kobuk River area. But their status was forever transformed thanks to two major factors. They faced a food shortage prompted by the decline in caribou, one of their major foods. This was also the time when European and Asian trade items were first introduced into their traditional society. The first trade items to arrive, a decade ahead of the Europeans themselves, were glass beads and pieces of metal that the Inupiat expertly incorporated into their traditional implements. This book integrates ethnohistoric, bio-anthropological, archaeological, and oral historical analyses.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781602233690 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Alaska Press |
| Publication date: | 04/15/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 400 |
| File size: | 29 MB |
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CHAPTER 1
THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF SWIFT WATER PLACE
Douglas D. Anderson and Bruce J. Lutz
Igliqtiqsiugvigruaq, or Swift Water Place, is one of several former village sites in the lower reaches of the Kobuk River, Alaska. Abandoned shortly after 1900 (Griggs et al., ch. 4), it was once a thriving community of families who wintered together at river's edge as their ancestors had for centuries. Although we cannot say when the site was founded, the dates from our archaeological excavations confirm that it was occupied when Europeans first sailed into nearby Kotzebue Sound in 1816 (Kotzebue 1821). Swift Water Place is still part of the living tradition of the region, for here reportedly was the home of one of the region's most important shamans and other political leaders whose influence was felt along the entire course of the river. Situated on the southwest bank of a large meander loop at 67° 6' 29.50' N/ 159° 40' 50.00" just above the outlet of the salmon-rich Kallarichuk (Qalugraitchiaq) River, the winter village is currently eroding into the Kobuk as the waters from the annual spring floods continue to wash out its banks. Now, only 26 house depressions remain from the once much larger village, and these are disappearing at an increasing rate of erosion.
According to local residents in Kiana, the nearest present village, at least six houses at the upriver end of Swift Water Place have washed away within recent memory. Since 1996, when David Gregg and Eileen Devinney first mapped the site for the National Park Service, at least three additional house pits have been freshly exposed in the cutbank.
Swift Water Place is now overgrown with numerous poplar trees (Populus balsamifera) and, along its innermost edge away from the river, some black spruce (Picea mariana). The understory is largely parklike, dominated by grassy vegetation interspersed with an occasional alder (Alnus spp.) or willow (Salix spp.) thicket (Fig. 1.1). According to tree ring dates we obtained from living trees on the site, the poplars are generally less than 100 years old, and the spruce only slightly older, which suggests that when people occupied the village, they were living in an open tundra-like meadow with a clear view of the river.
THE SITE
Archaeologically, the site is now pockmarked with various-sized house pits ringed by poplars and moisture-loving plants like horsetail (Equisetum spp.) and sedges (Cyperaceae spp.) (Fig. 1.2). The house depressions are unusually deep and clearly defined by high berms of soil thrown out by the original occupants as they dug the floors for their semisubterranean houses (Fig. 1.3). Many of these house ruins are tightly clustered, and their tunnels even intersect.
The house pits and other features we originally mapped as the Igliqtiqsiugvigruaq archaeological site (Anderson and Anderson 2010, 2011, 2013) are actually only a portion of a larger settlement complex, one that had been occupied over a period of several centuries. It includes multiple clusters of semisubterranean winter houses and summer campsites from a broadly meandering part of the river where "the water is very fast" (Joe Sun 1983:16).
Objects currently eroding out along the riverbank at Swift Water Place suggest that the most recent houses in this winter village were situated at its upriver end. The older house ruins are dispersed downriver from there for a distance of 2 km. Inasmuch as we realized only later that the downriver house pits were also part of the village complex, they have not been thoroughly surveyed and precisely mapped so are not illustrated on our original base map of the village. We have yet to identify the location of the summer campsites and believe them to be at Igliqtiqsiugviruk (Little Igliqtiqsivik) located a mile upriver from the winter houses.
The layout of Swift Water Place is unusual in that most of the houses — at least those we mapped — are tightly packed into an area of about 1,800 square meters, oriented in a variety of directions, and in many cases apparently connected to each other by tunnels. Houses with intersecting or multiple tunnels have been previously noted at the 13th-century Kobuk River site of Ahteut (Giddings 1952), but not in the numbers found here. Most of the house depressions ranged in size from 13 to 36 square meters, excluding the tunnels, but two were enormous, at least 45 square meters in area.
Numerous pits, both large and small, are interspersed between the house depressions in such profusion that we have been unable to associate many with particular houses. Most of the pits are circular in outline and were likely fish storage caches for dog food; but others were a bit larger and more rectangular, and apparently served other functions that we were unable to identify.
The density of houses in the mapped portion of the site was so concentrated that with only a few exceptions there would have been little space left for dogs to be staked out next to the houses. The space problem was apparently solved by having established a large communal dog yard on the periphery of the village (Urban et al. 2012). Although we have been unable to determine how much of the village was concurrently occupied, the presence of three qargich (pl.) mentioned in the oral history of the region (see W. Anderson, ch. 9) suggests that, at least during the middle part of the 19th century, the population of the village was large enough to support more than a single community house.
The features we selected for excavation included one relatively large ruin, House K, and one small ruin, House I, chosen as examples of the majority of house pits at the site. They were part of one cluster of houses that included at least two additional houses (Houses G and J in Fig. 1.1), which we did not excavate, and several depressions we believe to have been cache pits.
DESCRIPTIONS OF THE EXCAVATED HOUSES
House K
House K was a large, single-roomed house entered from the direction of the river to the north through an 11.3-meter-long semisubterranean tunnel. The room, covering approximately 36 square meters, was more than 5.9 m wide and 6.3 m front to back, with a floor lying between 1 and 2.5 m below ground level. In the center of the floor was a large 0.95-by-1.10 m rectangular hearth area lined by large upright slabs of shale (Fig. 1.4).
Clearly, the construction of the house had been a major undertaking, one that must have required considerable manpower. The owners first had to clear and excavate a pit slightly more than 6 meters square to a depth of over a meter within which to erect the wooden frame of the single-room house. To construct the large open hearth in the middle of the house floor, they dug an additional half-meter-deep rectangular pit below the level of the floor and lined it with large, heavy stone slabs 30 to 40 cm square and more than 3 cm thick that apparently had been obtained from a river-edge quarry in the vicinity of Coal Mine, 6 km downriver (Fig. 1.5). The hearth was in line with the tunnel entrance, likely to allow for proper draft for the fire.
The builders framed the house with large 20-to-23-cm diameter corner posts and raised four smaller posts at the corners of the central fireplace to mount a flat roof for a smoke hole. Except for the house posts, little of the superstructure remained.
For access to the house, they dug the tunnel floor deeper than the level of the house floor, as can be seen by a cross section of the floor and distribution of artifacts (Fig. 1.6). The house would have been entered from underneath the floor by crawling through the tunnel on hands and knees and stepping up into the room in a manner similar to later houses in the region. The deep tunnel also served as a cold trap as described for many Eskimo winter houses by Murdoch (1892, Fig. 9) and by Nelson (1899, Fig. 81).
Two alcoves extended off the tunnel, a small one to the east and a larger one to the west. The western alcove, which we did not have time to investigate fully, had a partially planked floor of a sizable room.
The builders lined the interior walls of the house with large slabs of birch bark, stitched together, that extended out a ways onto the floor itself. The central areas of the floor may have been partially covered with spruce boughs, traces of which were still evident in our excavations, but were mostly left as bare earth or possibly covered with material that has now decomposed. The room lacked clearly defined side or rear platforms, but the sheets of birch bark extending out from all four walls may have served as sitting and working areas (Fig. 1.7).
The rear of the house was a closely fitted plank wall comprised of uprights that likely rested directly against the superstructure (Fig. 1.8).
We found no trace of vertical planking along the side walls of the house, so we believe that the builders sided the house with insubstantial saplings, now decomposed, that were likely covered with sheets of bark.
Although we did not identify it during excavation, a later mapping of cultural debris suggests that the residents of the house had also added a small, deep alcove off the west side wall (Fig. 1.9), possibly used as a storage or trash pit.
It is difficult to know how the house was roofed, but given the size of the corner posts the roof was likely of substantial planking, which was subsequently removed when the house was abandoned.
Given the size of the house and placement of the logs and posts (Fig. 1.10), the structure appears to have been a composite corner and midsidewall post form that combined structural elements of both coastal and interior riverine house types of the period (Giddings 1961; Giddings and Anderson 1986).
HOUSE I
House I, lying immediately east of House K, was the remains of a small semisubterranean sod-covered structure whose size suggests that it was likely occupied by a single small family. Like House K, it was entered through a long, deep tunnel more than a meter below the surrounding ground level (Fig. 1.11). With a room size of only 13.6 square meters, House I was less than half the size of house K (Fig. 1.12).
Fortunately, many elements of construction of House I, especially those involving spruce logs and traces of sod blocks, were sufficiently preserved for us to reconstruct the general house form. The House I floor, a single room 3.4 m side to side and 4.0 m front to back, was dug down somewhat less than a meter, with the residential space situated primarily on the south side of the house (Fig. 1.13). Despite the small size of the room, however, the residents built a disproportionally large stone-lined hearth like that of House K (Fig. 1.14).
As in House K, the residents of House I positioned their hearth directly in line with the tunnel, obviously to manage the circulation of the smoke from the fire, which meant that the hearth was situated near the north wall. Three of the four sides of this meter-square fire pit were lined with large upright shale slabs; the fourth side (on the south) was open, but we believe it, too, was originally bordered by a large upright stone slab, one of which lay flat on the floor nearby. As is noted below, we believe that someone, possibly a resident or another member of the community, had removed this slab from the south side of the hearth to cover human remains embedded in the floor matrix of the house.
In contrast to House K, the builders of House I used substantial horizontal spruce logs to frame the house, one level high along the side walls (north and south) and at least three logs high along the rear wall. They did not cover the walls with birch bark, as had been the case in House K, but carpeted the entire floor with spruce boughs and small willow saplings, traces of which were clearly visible in our excavations.
Large fragments of birch bark, some stitched together, lay scattered about the floor midden on top of the spruce boughs. Since we found little evidence to indicate that birch bark had been used to cover the walls or floor, we suggest that they are remnants of roofing. Fragments of a soft wood, likely poplar, also covered some areas of the House I floor, frequently directly overlain with remnants of sod blocks. Where we could identify their orientation, the fragments lay in an east–west direction and were ostensibly also parts of the roofing of birch-bark sheets covered by sod blocks.
One of the logs or planks lay across the middle of the floor, apparently the remnants of a gabled roof beam oriented front to rear of the house. The underside of this log showed traces of scorching, possibly from having been burned by flames from the hearth.
The house was entered from the east (parallel to the river) through a 1.5-m-deep and 3.8-m-long tunnel connected to an underground storm shed into which an individual would have had to descend from ground level before entering. The tunnel joined the house at a point below the floor about 1 m in from the front wall, so that, as with House K, an individual would have entered the house from an opening under the floor. This can be readily seen in the distribution of cultural materials in the N 5.1 to 6.6 cross section (Fig. 1.15).
Other materials distributed around the berm of the house lay on the original ground surface; those directly above the house floor likely had been deposited on the roof either at the time of occupation or shortly after abandonment of the house.
The tunnel, set off from the midline of the front wall, was apparently cribbed by north–south cross beams supporting a long, east–west-oriented pole roof. In contrast to the house proper, however, little of its frame remained, apparently having been later removed for use elsewhere. A large flat stone lay at the point where the tunnel joined the house, and apparently served as a step up onto the house floor.
Portions of wood flooring and sheets of birch bark extended out beyond the southwestern corner of the house, however, possibly associated with tunnels connecting House I to House K and one of the adjacent houses (House F), which we did not investigate.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of House I was its departure from the paired pole form that is so characteristic of late-prehistoric riverine houses in the region. Instead of the typical paired central support beams like that illustrated by Giddings (1952: Fig. 6), the builders erected a gabled house, in which a ridge pole was positioned near the center of the house (Fig. 1.16).
Although unusual, House I is in fact only a slight modification of the standard late-prehistoric Kobuk River house form (Giddings 1961:125), possibly a function of its small size. What would have been the northern pair of central posts was removed so that the northern part of the roof rested directly on the northern side wall frame. And with this modification other modifications to the house layout had to follow, especially in the placement of the smoke hole on one side of the sloping roof (Fig. 1.17).
Placing the hearth off-center in such a small house left very little living space on the north side of the hearth, and as a result the residents apparently used it simply as storage space — witness the location of the pile of net sinkers recovered from there in our excavations (Figs. 1.18 and 1.21).
Adjacent to the southwestern corner of the house lay a large complex array of logs and poles. Some of these are apparently remnants of an earlier substantial structure through which the residents had dug in their construction of House I. But other logs and poles, especially in the southeastern quadrant, appear to be the remains of fish racks. Small concentrations of decomposed dog feces lay scattered amidst these logs, which suggests that this was also an area where dogs were staked. On the other hand, we found no evidence of depressions that dogs normally dig when they are staked out for some period of time, so we cannot be certain of this conclusion.
THE FAUNAL REMAINS
The faunal remains from within and around the two houses were in excellent condition, such that even small fish bones were well preserved. The bones were haphazardly scattered throughout the cultural middens and showed no evidence that they had been deposited in any particular area of the floor. The bones included the full range of animal species common to the region: large and small mammals, waterfowl, ptarmigan, and especially fish. But from the outset of our excavations, we were struck by the rarity of caribou bones in our faunal assemblages. In other archaeological sites that we have investigated in the region over the years, caribou bones have been in great abundance, and certainly have comprised a very high percentage in nearly all faunal assemblages we have analyzed. The rarity of caribou bones here was all the more remarkable because implements of caribou antler were common, and appeared in the same high percentages typical of all archaeological assemblages in the region with good organic preservation. In chapter 2 of this volume, DeAngelo and Weiss provide a detailed analysis of the faunal remains that confirms our field impressions.
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Table of Contents
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Foreword by Robin Kornfield
Preface by Douglas D. Anderson
Acknowledgments
Introduction by Douglas D. Anderson
Chapter 1. The Archaeology of Swift Water Place / Douglas D. Anderson and Bruce J. Lutz
Chapter 2. Survival and Settlement on the Kobuk: A Zooarchaeological Investigation of Two Northwest Alaska Houses / Rebekah DeAngelo and Zoe Weiss
Chapter 3. Geophysical Investigations at Swift Water Place / Thomas M. Urban
Chapter 4. Dendrochronology of Swift Water Place and Other Tree-Ring Samples from Northwest Alaska / Carol Griggs, Cynthia Kocik, Thomas M. Urban, and Sturt W. Manning
Chapter 5. Iñuułiq Niġisuk: Bioarchaeological Assessment of Human Remains Recovered from Swift Water Place / Gary P. Aronsen
Chapter 6. Genetic and Microscopic Analysis of Human Dental Calculus from Swift Water Place / Christina Warinner, Andrew Ozga, Anita Radini, Krithivasan Sankaranarayanan, and Cecil M. Lewis Jr.
Chapter 7. Stable Isotopic Dietary Analysis of Human and Faunal Remains from Swift Water Place / Peter W. Ditchfield, Thomas M. Urban, and Douglas D. Anderson
Chapter 8. Molecular Genetic Analysis of the Human Remains at Swift Water Place / Justin Tackney, Elisa Fair, and Dennis H. O’Rourke
Chapter 9. Triangulating Oral History, Archaeology, and Geophysics at Swift Water Place / Wanni W. Anderson
Chapter 10. Northwest Alaska Iñupiaq Historiography / Douglas D. Anderson and Wanni W. Anderson
Appendices
About the Authors
Index