Erskine House Excavation

Nasty weather today with rain and high winds - so we only excavated until noon. But for the last week we have been working pretty hard at the Erskine House and Sargent Park excavation. This year the community archaeology excavation has been a little different. Historic archaeology and I have not been in charge. It's a collaborative project between the Baranov and Alutiiq Museums to celebrate the bicentennial of the Erskine House. The Erskine House is one of the oldest Russian Structures still standing in North America. And since I'm more of a prehistoric archaeologist, the Baranov hired a pair of historic archaeologists to run the project (they have to write up the report :-).

I'm in charge of the labor - the crew foreman so to speak. I crack the whip.

Thus far it has been pretty interesting. The point of the project was to discover how the area had been used through time and to determine how badly the area had been disturbed during the urban renewal after the earthquake in 1964. We were worried that the entire area had been bulldozed and that everything would be disturbed.

The biggest discovery is that very little has been disturbed - we've found the foundations of houses that may predate the construction of the Erskine House in 1808, and have even found trash heaps with remarkable preservation. The most exciting artifact is a largely complete Alutiiq spruce root basket (from circa 1850).

We also found an aurc'uq dart that is used in a traditional Alutiiq game. It's nice to see the traditional Alutiiq artifacts in a Euro-American setting. It's obvious that Alutiiq people were actively hanging out near the Erskine House in the mid 19th century.

Photos: Top - excavation with the Baranov Museum (Erskine House) behind. Second photo is of happy excavators at the screen. Third photo is of a ceramic chard impressed with the imperial Russian eagle - note the English rather than cyrillic writing, this piece was probably made in England after 1840. The fourth photo shows Margan excavating the Spruce root basket. The last photo shows the basket prior to removal.


Patrick