Puffin Heads and Albatross Limbs: An Examination of Avifaunal Usage from the Rat Islands, Alaska

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Human groups have used birds in a variety of ways, from food, to raw material for tools, to clothing. In addition to their more practical usages, birds often play a significant role in cosmologies and myths. However, due to poor preservation and excavation bias bird remains have only recently begun to be studied in depth. The archaeological sites of the Aleutian Islands have very large avian bone assemblages due to excellent taphonomic conditions which allows rigorous study from which we can study not only local relationships with birds but also develop models for other times and places. Comparing the patterns of archaeological skeletal part representation with oral histories and ethnographies reveals the interplay of the symbolic and ‘material’ aspects of the relationship between birds and the residents of the Aleutian Islands. This presentation will examine a case study from KIS-050 and RAT-31 to examine how skeletal part representation can vary greatly even within island groupings and can reveal cultural and environmental changes. Specifically, the presence of puffin heads at KIS-050 versus the abundance of albatross head/parts at RAT-31 illustrates how avian use varied between the islands due to cultural factors and site usage.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39960.0