Alutiiq Museum documents summer’s archaeological discoveries

Alutiiq Museum Curator of Archaeology Patrick Saltonstall holds up the journal documenting his discoveries at Kiliuda Bay. (Photo by Kayla Desroches / KMXT)

Kayla Desroches/KMXT

When the colder months come around, local archeologists settle in to process the warmer month’s discoveries.

That’s what Alutiiq Museum Curator of Archaeology Patrick Saltonstall is doing. He’s turning the museum’s findings about a site on the east side of the island into a report for the land owner.

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Patrick Saltonstall opens a yellow journal and turns through dirt-smudged pages covered in notes and drawings.

“My favorite thing is the notebook. I like notebooks way better than artifacts ‘cause this is actually what we learned. This is what I did day to day. What we found in the pits.”

He turns to a page with a site map.

“And it was on a big beach with Kiliuda Bay out here, and the whole site was eroding really badly. Twenty years ago, there were like five or six house pits there. By the time we arrived, all those sites had been eroded away. They’d been destroyed by coastal erosion.”

He says the only thing left was a spot where people had tossed the rest of their food, and the museum looked for artifacts in there.

The museum did the excavation in July. It’s something that needs to be done before the land leaves federal protection and the owner can put it up for sale.

“And we kinda like these projects ‘cause it gives us a chance to do research in out-of-the-way places. It’s was kinda nice to go to Kiliuda Bay. We’ve never done a dig up there and sorta see what’s happening in that bay. Is it different from what we find it Uyak bay, where we’ve done a lot of work, or is it the same? It’s kinda neat to work in other parts of the island.”

The artifacts they found in Kiliuda Bay are kept in the collections room with rows of metal shelving and drawers. Saltonstall opens one row by turning a wheel at the end.

He walks down the row until he finds the right drawer.

“Here it is. The older stuff down at the bottom of the site, I knew it was pretty old before we even did the radiocarbon dates because we found all this chipped stone. You don’t usually find chipped stone in Kodiak’s more recent sites. You only find it in the older sites.”

Saltonstall says the area could be dated to around 4,000 years ago, and there’s evidence of cod smoking, porpoise hunting, and possibly crabbing.

He says they’ve gotten all the information they can from the site and the land is eroding so quickly he wouldn’t be surprised if there’s nothing left there in 20 years.

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