6/30/2023 0 Comments Risk of rain artifacts patterns![]() ![]() Today increasingly violent weather has driven Nunalleq to the brink of oblivion. “If you get an extreme, like a Little Ice Age-or like now-changes can occur faster than people can adjust.” “Whenever you get rapid change, there’s a lot of disruption in the seasonal cycles of subsistence,” Knecht says. The coldest years in Alaska, in the 1600s, must have been a desperate time, with raids probably launched to steal food. Knecht believes the attacks were the result of climate change-a 550-year chilling of the Earth now known as the Little Ice Age-that coincided with Nunalleq’s occupation. Nunalleq offers the first archaeological evidence, and the first firm date, for this frightful period, which affected several generations of Yupiks. Oral tradition preserves memories of a time historians call the Bow and Arrow Wars, when Yupik communities fought each other in bloody battles sometime before Russian explorers arrived in Alaska in the 1700s. Knecht, who’s based at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, sees a link between the destruction at the site and the old tales that modern Yupiks remember. “This grass was cut when Shakespeare walked the Earth,” marvels lead archaeologist Rick Knecht, a quiet, grizzled veteran of decades of digging. Break open a muddy, fibrous bundle and you’ll find crisp, green blades of grass preserved inside. The remains of baskets and mats still retain the intricate twists of their woven patterns. Beyond the sheer quantity and variety, the objects are astonishingly well preserved, having been frozen in the ground since about 1660. Archaeologists have recovered more than 2,500 intact artifacts at Nunalleq, from typical eating utensils to extraordinary things such as wooden ritual masks, ivory tattoo needles, and a belt of caribou teeth. Skeletons of women, children, and elders were found together, facedown in the mud, suggesting that they were captured and killed.Īs is often the case in archaeology, a tragedy of long ago is a boon to modern science. ![]() ![]() Archaeologists unearthed the remains of someone, likely a woman, who appears to have succumbed to smoke inhalation as she tried to dig an escape tunnel under a wall. The muddy square of earth is full of everyday things that the indigenous Yupik people used to survive and to celebrate life here, all left just as they lay when a deadly attack came almost four centuries ago.Īround the perimeter of what was once a large sod structure are traces of fire used to smoke out the residents-some 50 people, probably an alliance of extended families, who lived here when they weren’t out hunting, fishing, and gathering plants. The archaeological site of Nunalleq on the southwest coast of Alaska preserves a fateful moment, frozen in time. This story appears in the April 2017 issue of National Geographic magazine. ![]()
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