Today my brother Dicky and I are off to my old stomping grounds on Kodiak's South end to hunt reindeer and sitka blacktail deer. Friends Ray and Paul are joining us. I am looking forward to going back to the area I surveyed for archaeological sites over the course of 4 years. I know the area by the river pretty darn well! But when I am doing archaeological surveys I never seem to get away and explore all that much - I have to find sites and map them, and the sites are not up on the mountain tops. On this trip I'll get to leave the river and explore.
Another aspect of visiting the area this late in the year is that I should get an appreciation of what it was like for the Alutiiq people who lived there in the late fall and early winter. Too often archaeologists rely on what is in books to say how people used a certain landscape. They really have no idea what it is actually like to live in that landscape at a certain time of the year. And since most archaeologists teach at 'Far Away' Universities they rarely, if ever, get to visit where they work in the field during the fall, winter and spring. Archaeologists go in the field in the summer when school is out.
I'm lucky - I'll be checking out the conditions on the Ayakulik River in late Fall. I'll probably learn why the Alutiiq built such nice warm houses! I also might learn about some resources that were available to the Alutiiq that I never thought of or read about in books. For instance, 'oh so that's why there was such a huge village here - the silver salmon pool up and spawn right in front of the site!'.
It should be fun! Patrick
No comments:
Post a Comment