I discovered this knife in an old mud house we are digging up.

In Yup’ik culture we are to leave someone else’s belongings alone, especially at an old site, otherwise we may get haunted by whoever the belongings belonged to. However, our anthropology class is digging out a sod house in an old uninhabited small village that was abandoned in the late 1950’s after the Bureau of Indian Affairs shut the local school down. The Cup’ig people of Ellikarmiut moved northeast to the village of Mikuyarmiut (Mekoryuk). What got left behind were structures such as sod houses; they are not standing anymore. We are digging to see what people used back in the nineteenth century and earlier; we also want to see how they survived. Over the years grass has grown into the squarish structures, and it is difficult digging past the roots and the grass. After several days of digging, we may have dug down to where the flooring is.

What got left behind in the sod house that we are digging in is a combination of modern and non-modern day artifacts: small beads, knives, ivory from walrus, a lantern, rubber boots, check-stamp pottery, bottles, several drums, burnt bones from ,seal, birds, and reindeer or caribou, also cans and stones, mussels, a whale bone scapula, nylon, electrical wiring, batteries, Tupperware, silverware, broken glass, a jar of seal oil, etc…

What amused me is on the first day of digging I discovered an artifact that is about 90-100 years old. This artifact is a hand made, the handle is made out of bone and a blade made of metal. The handle of the knife has carved grooves where the handle and blade were lashed together. It is not in great shape because the metal is rusted, but it still identifiable.

This knife could have been used for numerous minor errands, like a pocket knife that comes in handy today. A similar blade to this is now in the Berlin Museum.

What we can learn from this artifact about the Cup’ig people is that they still had their traditional ways of tool use and subsistence.

Florence Nukusuk

During the past couple of days our anthropology class has been excavating a site in the remains of old Nash Harbor village. This village hasn’t been inhabited for about fifty years. One of the people that used to live here is our camp elder, Nan. Nan has been spending time here in Nash Harbor telling us stories. She has lots of great stories. So far it has been a lot of fun. My main job at our dig site is screening. Screening is where you sift dirt removed from the site in order to find the artifacts. I really like doing that because I get to find all of the best artifacts, in my opinion. In my dig site I found a piece of ivory that had been sawed down. It could have been sawed down to make a piece of artwork for trading, because the people that used to live here did a lot of trading for other goods. The piece of ivory was in the dig site perhaps because it was unusable. It was most likely the core of an old walrus tusk. The fact that we found ivory shows that the people that used to live here used traditional methods of ivory carving all the way into the 20th century. Europeans didn’t have a presence at Nash Harbor until the 1920’s.

As you can see in the picture above the ivory that I found is no longer white because it has been in the ground for so long. It was about four inches long and an inch thick. It was super pretty even though it was dirty. I scrubbed it with a toothbrush but it is still brown. I used my lip gloss as a size comparison because it was the only thing that I had at the time, and I love my lip gloss.

♥

Jenny

Many years ago Nash Harbor was a village of a couple hundred people. They lived in semi-subterranean sod houses dug into the side of the hills. About a week ago we began clearing the grass around a rectangular depression that had been inhabited around fifty years prior. It is approximately thirty feet up the hill from our camp. The depression is roughly three yards wide, five yards long, and half a yard deep at some places. As soon as we began digging we made some interesting finds. They weren’t very valuable, but it was entertaining. We found things like old boots, fish nets, knives, marbles, bottles, arrowheads, batteries, mussel shells, barrels, and much, much more.

Yesterday, after digging through two to three feet of dirt, I came upon what looked like a rotten log. I removed the surrounding dirt to find a flat, wooden surface, most likely made of drift wood. Rick, our teacher, informed me that it was the floor of the ancient sod house. It may date back to the 1920’s. Right now we are in the process of completely uncovering the floor. It is going to be difficult because it probably spans across all of our digging squares. It was an important find because it proved that we are digging out a traditional house, and not just a food cache or other storage structure. By tomorrow we might be able to uncover the rest of the floor, but until then we can only keep digging.   –Doug

Rick Davis is our anthropology teacher. He has done archaeological excavations all over the world; his expertise has insured that the manner in which we do our dig is proper, but more importantly, professional. We began with a quick discussion at the site about the Nunivak Eskimos, the Nuniwarmiut, who lived here and what we could find digging in a site of an old sod house. The excavation began with gridding out the dig zone in to 2 by 2 meter squares (total size about 4 by 8 meters) and the removal of the top sod layer. Doug Lucas, Ben Kuntz, and I have been digging in a square designated as Test Trench One.

Test Trench One is outside of the depression once containing a sod house. The purpose of Test Trench One is to find what activities or tools would be done/found outside of the living quarters and to sample for earlier occupations. Our finds have included a mixture of Norton era objects such as checkstamped ceramics to modern objects as nails, fishing nets, and tar paper. The most amazing find was a intact end-blade, most likely used as an arrow head within the Norton Era which dates as far back as AD500.

The End-blade, as seen, shows extensive knapping marks. The end-blade was made by striking stone or antler against volcanic chert rock. According to an article that we’ve read, bows and arrows were used in hunting caribou. Many caribou-hunting techniques were developed around bow and arrows: Lavniarculuteng, in which the hunters carefully stalked their prey; Can’ircutulit, in which the hunters were located in the path of fleeing caribou and shot as they passed by; and another technique using grass mat and driftwood fences to trap caribou, making them easier to shoot (Pratt 2001, “Ethnohistory of Caribou Hunting and Interior Land Use on Nunivak Island”). Our end-blade may have been used in such manners or may not have met the creators’ standards and been tossed.

The end-blade shows the mastery with which early Nunivak Island people managed a subsistence living. It showed that they had magnificent patience and craftsmanship to create such a beautiful find. Unfortunately for the caribou, the Nunivak hunters, together with other unwelcome natives from various regions along the west coast, hunted the caribou to extinction in the late 1880s.

–Daniel–

On June 21st our Anthropology class started to dig a specific mud house right behind our camping area that has been there for many years. So far we have found many different artifacts. As a team we found many different types of bones, pieces of a boot, lot of nails, a barrel, the scapula of a whale, a knife spears, pieces ivory, a plate that is still in one piece, and a lot of different things. We are digging our items from the mud house that people used when there was hardly any western technology here at all. Nunivak Island has been inhabited for over 2,000 years by the Nuniwarmiut, or Cupi’g, people. The first contact with the Europeans was in 1821 by explores from the Russian-American Company. They recorded 400 people living in 16 villages on the Nunivak Island.

The most interesting artifact that I found was an ivory harpoon wedge. Ivory is interesting because the people used it here for so many different things. They used ivory for decorations, weapons, transportation, furniture, adornment, wealth, and trade with the outsiders that used to come to the Nunivak Island. Ivory comes from a walrus tusk. Ivory was harder and more durable than wood or bone, and ivory didn’t chip, crack, or even break like other materials. It was lighter than stone and lasted a lifetime. They also used the ivory for fleshes, needles, digging sticks, fish hooks, and fishing nets. This is why I chose this particular artifact because it was usable for many things to the Cup’ig people.

-Mary moe

Upon arriving at Nash Harbor, we immediately began work for our fisheries class. Our instructor was only going to stay for the first week. Imagine cramming a semester’s worth of work not into the original three weeks, but in one! We were doing a minimum of four hours a day, which comprised of a lecture/lab and then field work. Of course, our field work was a lot more interesting. This consisted of setting mino traps, beach seining, and stirring up the gravel to catch macroinvertibrates, tiny insect like critters that live in the water. We caught a total of eight different species of fishes including Chum, Sockeye, Pink, Dolly Varden juvenile, Dolly Varden adult, 3 spine stickleback, 9 spine stickleback, Blackfish, and Starry Flounder.

The most interesting fish caught, in my opinion, was the starry flounder. I had never seen a flounder before so I was really interested in the fish. The flounder is generally a salt water fish, but we caught a few right where the freshwater stream runs into the ocean. We captured this species by beach seining. This is where two people take a net and drag it along the ocean floor, catching fish in the process. The fish that are caught at the start of the seine can’t escape because the force of the water presses them against the net. Flounder spend their time on the bottom of the ocean, so we were able to catch quite a few of them.

Nash Harbor offers good habitat for this fish. These fish prefer soft bottoms with depths from a few meters to 375 meters. They are also found upriver to the limit of tides, staying in the marshes. The starry flounder possesses the following characteristics: they live 4-6 years, can be found from the northern coast of Alaska down to California, spawn in shallow marshy areas, feed on crustacean, grow up to 91 cm, and can weigh up to 9.1kg.

-Kyle

Ever since I’ve been here I’ve learned a whole lot about fish that I never knew in my life. I know almost all the names and parts of a fish, and how to tell fish apart even when they almost look alike. For the first week that we were here, we worked intensively in our fisheries class. After working in the classroom for a while, we went with our instructors on a hike to catch some fish for record-keeping. The first time we went fishing, we just set out small minnow traps to sit over night so that we could check them the following day to see and record how many fish we caught. That day only a couple of fish were caught. It was very exciting. Just by discovering the fish we caught in the minnow traps, we got to see where the fish like to swim and hide and what they like to eat. We measured all the fish, took pictures, drew some, and let them go.

The second time we went fishing, we caught fish by beach seining. Beach seining is when two people on both sides of the net drag it in the water. It’s just like scooping up the fish, or more like sweeping. We caught a whole bunch of juvenile fish and recorded them the same way we recorded the fish that we caught in the minnow traps.

Now that we had all the information about the fish and how to identify them, we started putting together little journals of fish that we caught here in Nash Harbor. One of the fish we caught the most was the three spine stickle back fish. It has three thorn like needles on its back, and a very slender caudal peduncle (the base of the tail), and a squarish tail fin. The Latin name for the three spine stickle back fish is, Gasterosteus aculeatus Linnaeus. The Yup’ik name is Quarruuk. The three-spine stickle back fish inhabits vegetated areas. They are also found in Europe, Mediterranean, Black Seas, Africa, North Pacific, Korea, Bearing Sea, California, and Mexico. They eat worms, crustaceans, larvae, insects, and other s mall fishes. The three-spine stickle back fish live less than fifteen months and grow to a maximum size of eleven centimeters.  –Yvonne

We are digging out a house pit that used to be a sod house, inhabited by the people of Nash Harbor during the 1920s. Remains from previous houses lie on top of the sod house that we are looking for, which dates back to 2000 B.P. (Before present) . We are excavating the pit to discover remnants of Nash Harbor occupants and their ways of life. My role in the dig is too excavate the entrance to the house. So far I have uncovered what looks like a possible stone flooring to the entrance. I have found a lot of trash in my square(s), which could indicate that recent peoples of this area used it as a place to dump their trash. My most significant find was when I found a piece of checkstamp pottery, known to be associated with the Norton culture, which is more than 2000 years old. Checkstamp pottery is pottery pressed by a wooden paddle with a pattern etched into it, therefore applying the pattern onto the pottery. Temper was used to hold the shape of the pottery as it was open pit fired. My artifact was part of a bowl that may have been used to eat with. The fact that the people of Nash Harbor had pottery tends to indicate that they were more sedentary, which means they didn’t move around a lot. Under difficult circumstances they were able to fire pottery that became useful vessels for cooking, storage, or eating out of. –Dimitri

today is my 2nd day of work and it’s Thursday June 28.  my job is pretty fun. i’ve been practicing some things here..  and i’m learning a lot.  it’s a good experience. so far, it’s almost 3 weeks since we’ve been here.  a few more weeks and we’ll go home.     Last weekend, we went to Children’s Home passed Kwethluk. we had fun going for the boat ride.  we looked around in some of the buildings and there were so many things there.  it was pretty fun, but it started raining.  we got here just when it started raining.  well, i’m gonna end this here.. so see u til my next blog..       ~Tiffany~

Man!! This hike we took a couple of days ago was intense! My legs would get very worn out and wet. It was a long hike, about three miles long. We still had fun (in the rain) going a long ways, looking at musk ox, bird watching on the tundra, and also looking at some grave sites. I also discovered a loon nest near a pond. The bird almost scared me out of my pants,and I nearly fell to the ground. After it took off I took a couple of pictures of the two eggs, and took off to see other neat things on the island. There were a lot of shells on the beach, and we even saw a seal out in the ocean with the binoculars. It was the first time I ever saw one looking straight at me. It was amazing!

Whoooogh man, this place is incredible! There are muskox, hundreds of reindeer, and a friendly fox nearby. So far I’ve seen eight musk ox, videoed them for a few seconds. and took a couple of pictures. The reindeer are here roaming around every where. I saw maybe a thousand reindeer being herded together by a chopper. There is a fox that has showed up a couple of times, eating the fish that we cut up. Speaking of fish, I’ve been fishing here, and catching fish after fish. So far I have caught about 12 fish. Daniel has got the record for the biggest fish, and I have the second, Ben the third and Dimitri the fourth (Editors note: the fish size opinions of the author are unverified and do not necessarily reflect the views of the other fishermen involved). Boy do I love fishing here!

These last few days, we have participated in many activities, things like a day long hike, lots of archaeological digging, and a midterm test for anthropology. The hike was awesome. We walked along the tops of the bluffs for three miles. The view was incredible, you could see for miles. Our turn around point was another inlet that had a nice beach. We made a fire and cooked dinner. After eating a few of us had fun skipping rocks, just having fun. The hike back was killer. We were all full from lunch, making the hike feel especially long. We got back to camp and were really tired so we went to bed.
The digging is becoming more and more interesting. As we continue scraping and shoveling, we are finding older and “cooler” artifacts. We dug for almost 3 hours the other day, and found the following: bones from all kinds of animals, metal drums, old knives, bottles, marbles, and beads. There’s a lot more to archaeology than I thought. After digging, you have to sift the dirt, and then wash the artifacts you find with toothbrushes. Altogether its been really interesting.

The midterm wasn’t too bad. It was before that made it stressful. I felt like I was back in school studying at the end of the year. I had to read many pages from the text and take many pages of notes. The night before, I looked over them and did some last minute reading. I’m glad it’s over with. I’m looking forward to this last week of camp. We’re supposed to go kayaking and participate in some over night hikes. We’ll keep you posted!

Kyle Chavez

Since we are at Nash Harbor, there is a fresh water that goes into a lagoon then into the salty ocean. Fish traffic occurs at high tide; there are at least four people who want to fish to see who can catch the most. It is kind of tough to cast out here because the hooks can get caught on rocks, which happened several times. We have already lost four or five lures! We also have a problem with pulling in and catching algae. Fishing is enjoyable when the weather is beautiful. The funny part is, Dimitri and T.J. love to compete. So far Dimitri has caught four fish, T.J. has caught eight fish and I cast for fun.

Dimitri and I trying to catch fish at high tide, which usually happens at 5 in the evening. (I caught a lot of algae so far!) Dimitri also has managed to lose 4 hooks and myself one!

Here is the student fisherman champ so far; T.J. has caught eight fish.

I have been having fun watching TJ, Dimitri, and some others fishing. Having classes with Rick, Nicola, Eva, and Ben and going out to take some field notes is a whole lot of fun. Learning more about Science is really great and cool. I have been talking with the cook, Elena. We have been talking about how she likes it here and what she has been doing here. She has been cooking and cleaning for the students, and what does she get? Nothing but a “thank you”, a Mountain HardWear jacket and two pairs of wool socks. I joke! But here at Nash Harbor it is totally fun! I like it here.

Felicia Olson

During these long summer days, bird life animates the landscape of Nunivak Island. They inhabit almost every possible glimpse of tundra, ocean, beach, or cliff, and on our hikes we have to careful or we will literally step on them. Black-legged kittiwakes, arctic terns, and cormorants wheel and dive for smelt just offshore from our camp, while flocks of geese and sea ducks veer inland over our camp, following the river. Nesting shorebirds and songbirds leap up from under our feet as we hike, sometimes dragging wings in fake injury to lead us away from their nests or chicks. Many hikes lead to the clifftops, where soaring raptors trace the edges of the cliffs while flocks of seabirds bob on the waves below. Though the island’s muskox, reindeer, and sea mammals make impressive appearances every now and then, birds are the dominant presence of animal life here.

For any dedicated birders, here is a list of the species we have seen so far, courtesy of resident birder Melia Knecht:

Pelagic cormorant, red-throated loon, Pacific loon, murre (sp), horned puffin, tufted puffin, common eider, long-tailed duck, northern pintail, harlequin duck, green-winged teal (American), red-breasted merganser, scoter (sp), scaup (sp), tundra swan, cackling goose, greater white-fronted goose, emperor goose, glaucous gull, glaucous-winged gull, black legged kittiwake, arctic tern, long-tailed jaeger, parasitic jaeger, sandhill crane, whimbrel, Wilson’s snipe, red-necked phalarope, semi-palmated plover, black-bellied plover, dunlin, western sandpiper, rock sandpiper, common redpoll, American pipit, snow bunting, Lapland longspur, gray-crowned rosy finch, savannah sparrow, rough-legged hawk (dark morph), and tree swallow.

Some species we saw last year and hope to see again include parakeet auklet, crested auklet, gyrfalcon (grey), dowitcher (sp), goldeneye (sp), Sabine’s gull, Steller’s eider, and slaty-backed gull.

Ben

Ever since I’ve been here, I’ve been learning a lot about fish and about culture, including how the people on this island once lived. I haven’t ever been so academically focused in my life. I’ve been reading about fish, studying them, and even dissecting them. Before I ever came to this camp, I never knew what all the fish fin names were, or even how to determine if they were salmon or something else. When I’m not socializing during free time, I’m taking notes from the Anthropology book, reading about different cultures, or taking a nap from being tired from our long hiking. One place we hiked to was up along the stream to set minnow traps. We learned how to record hand-written data about when we set the trap, if, when, and where we caught the fish, what time we caught it, and more. We even hiked up the side of the camp and saw evidence of muskox. This camping trip is really interesting, because everyday we learn something new. I’m excited to see what the next two weeks have waiting for our learning adventure. –Yvonne

Cold. That is what describes my first impression of the island the most. There is still snow on the ground here in certain areas. We all soon learned how to keep warm though, dressing better and insulating against the constant moisture that seeps into your skin. The cold was hardly noticed however in the following days as we started doing the activities that we came to the camp to do. We soon began our fisheries class, getting down and dirty with four dead fish by cutting them into several pieces to further our knowledge of their internal and external systems. Anthropology ended up being my favorite subject because it relates to how humans interact with one another. Soon we were hiking all over the place getting wet and yucky, though for a good purpose: saving the world one fish scale at a time. This involved taking scale samples of the dolly varden for further study. For the most part I have ended up being wet. On one of the first days I decided to go swimming and that was mildly cold, though I do not think it was as cold as others think it is. I then got wet in my hip waders and randomly at other times. It is really hard to get your clothes dry at times. Other then that I have been going through my classes and getting everything done. Then I finish out my day and go to bed. That is the island life for you.:p

Birdica

When we arrived here at Nash Harbor the first couple of days were sunny. Since then the weather has been cloudy, windy, rainy, and cold. Nash Harbor is like Hawaii with cold weather and different kinds of animals. But the beach, ocean, hills and streams would remind you of Hawaii. Since we have been here the activities have been great. We have been hiking a lot, checking our fish traps and recording the data, putting on our wet suits and walking beside the lake, taking a lot of pictures, making videos, having our classes outside, and supplying wood for our steam bath. I enjoyed setting our fish traps by the lake, recording data and measuring the different kinds of fish that each of us had or didn’t have. I liked this part because I had not set fish traps before or measured fish on a ruler and recorded data about them. Also, since we left Bethel I have learned more about my friends from school and two more other people from Hooper Bay.

-mary moe

Here at Nunivak so far we have hiked, found bird eggs, put together minnow traps, checked minnow traps, and started to clear out the area where we are going to be looking for artifacts. I think that by far the best part of the camp for me was when we went out to check the sample fish traps. I was one of the only people wearing waders that day so I was selected to go and get the minnow traps out, and in the process of doing so I stepped into a drop off unexpectedly. The water was up to my chest just below where my waders stopped. Then the drop off was so large that I couldn’t get back up to shore! Eva ( one of the instructors) had to help me get out. It was scary but at the same time awesome. I really liked setting out the minnow traps, even though it was a little bit cold out. The only part that I didn’t like was when I had to put fish eggs in my minnow trap for bait. It was really gross because we had to squish them all up so that the fish would be able to smell them. The fish traps are about a mile away from us so we have to hike there. I like that part a lot too because it’s really beautiful out here. We also saw a fox! It was really close to us and that was pretty cool. –Jenny

Jenny

Sitting on the side of the Naparyarak River, which is just up river from Hooper Bay, filleting fish after fish for the winter is a joy and hard work! It also leaves a sore back the next day, but the job gets done. After removing the head with an ulu, we cut open the ventral side of the fish, remove the fish’s organs, flip it on the other side, cut the back and separate it from the backbone, and then finally make the fish lines in the fish. I have had quite a bit of experience working with fish and each time I am going to remove the organs I am always wondering what part of the fish it is, or what fins are located where on the fish. Here at the Ellikarmiut Summer Science Camp we currently are taking the following classes: Anthropology 100x, University Communications, and Introduction to Fish Biology and Fish Techniques. In the Fisheries Class I am learning a lot of where and what parts of the fish are where and what they are used for, which is why I am highly interested in identifying both external and internal anatomy of a fish. I am especially interested in salmon in particular because I have continuously seen basically the same ventral and dorsal sides of the fish both externally and internally. My curious longing to identify what I have repeatedly seen has now become a base of my knowledge.

Shown here the body cavity is open, and the swim bladder is exposed and looks silver along the spine. Also shown is the isthmus which is the V-Shaped opening on the chin of the fish.

Florence Nukusuk