Bodies point to Alaska's past

Submitted by coldrum on Friday, 04 January 2008 Page Views: 2181

It is not the type of a call that an archaeologist receives every day.
There are bodies, the voice on the end of the line told Anne Jensen; we don't know who they were, or why they are here.

"People started noticing stuff eroding out of the bluff," she recalls, "and I got called out, along with the police, the real estate people and so on.
"It was very clearly an archaeological burial. And the bluff was collapsing quickly, so we just got the contents out."
The bluff lies virtually at the end of the Americas, on a narrow, hooked spit projecting northwards from Barrow. It marks the join of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, and is prey to the temperamental vagaries of both.
Now known as Point Barrow, the settlement on it was Nuvuk for at least 1,000 years, a spot presumably chosen because of its proximity to the migration path of bowhead whales which would become the cultural and nutritional centre of Nuvuk life.
These bodies, these bones, clearly came from no crime scene. The police could leave, and Dr Jensen's team could get to work on a find more closely related to its own interests. It has been working every summer since.

Disappearing land
When I visit in late May, the spit itself is virtually invisible beneath the blanket of ice which carpets land and sea alike.
Led by Laura Taylor, we speed out on to the ice on snowmobiles, bodies swathed in heavy-duty parkas and feet wrapped in "bunny boots" which include a layer of air to insulate the delicate extremities.
We traverse cracks created as the sea-borne ice rides up and down on the tide. We pass a couple of umiaq, traditional sealskin whaling boats left out on the ice, and every so often a scientific instrument or two, testimony to the extraordinary richness of Barrow's research tapestry.
After perhaps 20 minutes we disembark at the point, the site of ancient Nuvuk. The higher level of ice is a clue that we are on land, and grey-brown late Spring melt mush materialises beneath our feet as we walk, to prove the case.
Here, at the edge, is Anne Jensen's bluff, where bodies began appearing a decade ago. Or at least, here is where it is now; then it was 100 metres or further from the sea.
"We've had a lot of changing in currents over the past decade or so," explains Dr Taylor, "and with the changing currents and increased storm activity in the fall especially, it's undercutting the gravels and the point is literally washing out into the ocean."

"It's eroding at about 20m per year; we only have an eight-week field season, and we need to cover at least 300m of shore," she says.
Tunnels into history

The team uncovers about 20 complete burials each year. The methodology now involves digging exploration holes every few metres in a lattice pattern - "Swiss-cheesing", as Laura Taylor calls it - and excavating the newly identified burial sites.

Most of the bodies were interred in a rough framework made of wood or whale bones, with a piece of driftwood on top; some were also wrapped in animal skin or fur.

Whalebone tools for making nets have been found in Nuvuk burials
Artefacts have also surfaced, making suggestions about how people lived in Nuvuk. Here, a body holds an ulu, a traditional knife used for taking blubber from whale carcasses; there, a grave gives up weights from a bolus which would have been used to hunt birds.

There is armour made from whale baleen. Many of the graves also contain flat stones, which presumably have some kind of ceremonial purpose.

Researchers can also call on human memory and lore, because Nuvuk retained human inhabitants until about 60 years ago.

And although the houses have gone, Ukpeagvik, in the middle of what is now Barrow, has been an important site for studying remains of dwellings from the same period and culture; dwellings of impressive complexity built with subterranean cold-traps, entrance tunnels supported by whale mandibles, and insulation by sod.

For more, see the BBC. The approximate location can be found here: this link.

Note: 1000 year old Alaskan cemetery unearthed by climate change.

Contributor Bio for coldrum: Based in Milkyway, contributing since 2002. Favourite site: Avebury.

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