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| Nice bipoint Catherine! |
During the last week of the dig we started to get into the lowest levels of the site. The first Alutiiq hunting lances were made of chipped stone. Later in time, they ground them from slate - the ubiquitous ground slate bayonets we found so many of during the first 3 weeks of the dig. So as we got deeper into the lowest, and hence oldest, layers of the site we started to find more and more of the older chipped stone lances.
Another interesting find from the last day of the dig was a ground slate lance with a battered tip. When we excavated a site up at the outlet to Buskin Lake practically every bayonet that we found exhibited such damage to the tip. Up at Buskin Lake there are no seals and the bayonets were most likely used to spear spawning salmon in the shallow river below the outlet to the lake. The bayonets get battered from hitting the bottom.
In contrast almost all the bayonets from the Kashevaroff Site have sharp tips. The battered tip bayonet from last week is one of the very few that we have found at the site over the last 3 years. It indicates that while the primary activity at the site was hunting sea mammals they still occasionally did a little fishing using their bayonet tipped spears as gaffs. Patrick
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| Jesse's chipped stone endblade |
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| Ryan's chipped point from the lower levels |
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| Backdirt piles are getting up there! |
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| Flake knife from the lower levels |
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| Duals screens at work - rushing to get it done! |
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| Bayonet with battered tip, probably used to spear fish against a rocky bottom - we did not find many of these |
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