Nuvuk, Birnirk, Utqiaġvik, Walakpa and Beyond: All Those Sites Will Soon Be Gone

Summary

These are all classic sites, but many of them were last excavated a half century or more ago. New questions and new methods require types of data that was not collected back then; additional excavation with finer provenience control is also needed. Such work has been undertaken at sites like Cape Espenberg, but only at the Nuvuk cemetery in North Alaska. The apparent assumption by those not working in the area has been that the sites were stable, and that there was no hurry. That is no longer the case. Erosion rates have increased tremendously, due to warming permafrost, sea ice retreat and longer ice-free seasons. Nuvuk is averaging a loss of 10 m a year. Coastal erosion exposed a house at Walakpa in 2013. Small scale salvage was done, and additional funding was sought to excavate the structure and associated area, but a single fall storm in 2014 destroyed the structure before funds were secured. This paper highlights a problem with current funding mechanisms. The review process is such that funds cannot be available to deal with an important endangered site during the next field season, even if a competitive proposal is prepared on very short notice.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Current Problems in Arctic Research

Keywords

Spatial Coverage