Back from the Sturgeon River

Yesterday I got back from an archaeological survey of the Sturgeon River and Lagoon.  Because the river does not flow out of a lake we dropped our rafts and gear at the headwaters of the river and then landed on the Karluk River and hiked 11 miles overland to our gear.  And so began our float trip.

Matt VD and Paul C accompanied me on the survey.  Paul guides in the area and knows it really well while Matt is helping with a land management plan for the area and needs to know where the archaeological sites are located and their current condition so that they can be better protected.

Since there is not a lake at the head of the river I did not expect to find many prehistoric sites.  But we did!  And unlike the bigger systems with lakes, most of the sites we found upriver dated to about 1000 years ago.  Even at the lagoon we found very few late prehistoric site (250 to 700 years old).  It looks like the Sturgeon River and Lagoon was a hot spot 1000 years ago.

REALLY low water levels in the river meant had to do a lot of dragging to get to the lagoon.  But I'll leave that part of the story to another blog post.  Patrick