Bering Strait Socio-economic Organization, ca.2000-200 BP: A View from Port Clarence

Portland State University, Portland OR

Investigators

Abstract

This is an EAGER proposal to support archaeological excavation and analysis of an ancient site at Point Spencer, Alaska, near the former US Coast Guard (USCG) station. This research is appropriate for EAGER funding because of its application of new techniques and the potential for discovery of new information. In addition, the project has an element of urgency to it because of subsistence/illegal digging that has increased at the site location following the departure of the USCG. More than 50 years ago Helge Larsen recognized the importance of the stratified Ipiutak and Neoeskimo deposits at the Point Spencer site, located on the Bering Sea coast of northern Alaska. In the late 1940s, Larsen and Charles Lucier investigated this extensive village site as part of a larger effort to explain western Alaskan prehistory. With intact stratified deposits dated across the Ipiutak-Neoeskimo transition and good organic preservation, Larsen and Lucier recognized the potential of Point Spencer to address key questions about socio-economic change over the last 2000 years. Despite this potential, no research has taken place at the site in the intervening years. The research proposed here involves excavation at Point Spencer to address questions about socio-economic organization during this period of significant cultural change. Changing diet, subsistence practices, environmental change, and engagement with regional social and economic systems are factors archaeologists point to in explaining the development and spread of the Neoeskimo tradition across the North American Arctic. Yet these ideas remain largely untested with new archaeological data. This research will address these questions through data recovery and survey in the Port Clarence region of northern Alaska. Illegal digging at Point Spencer brings both urgency and risk to the proposed project. In 2010, it was estimated that approximately 40 acres of the site were disturbed, with more than 70 pits or disturbed areas created by illegal digging. Much of this digging took place in 2010 when the USCG withdrew from their station near the site. Aerial surveys indicate that similar illegal digging activities are taking place at other archaeological sites around the Port Clarence region. Research goals include: 1) establishing the local chronology, 2) investigating mobility and settlement patterns both locally and regionally, 3) studying subsistence activities and diet, 4) reconstructing local landscape history, and 5) evaluating the scope of illegal digging activities at the site and develop a framework for collaboratively addressing this problem with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and local communities. Methods include excavation, radiocarbon dating, spatial data analysis, ceramic sourcing, artifact analysis, residue analysis of soils and ceramics, faunal analysis, study of cooking/processing features, and geoarchaeology.