The Alutiiq
Museum's staff conducts research on many aspects of Alutiiq heritage.
We study Alutiiq collections in museum's around the world,
lead archaeological field work, conduct oral history interviews, and
document the Alutiiq language. Here are some examples of recent and
on-going research projects.
AlitakPetroglyphSurvey
Despite their enormous popularity, Kodiak's petroglyphs have never
been systematically documented. Alutiiq Museum Executive Director
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is working to accomplish this massive task. For the past seven years, he
has enlisted the help of Akhiok residents to locate and document
petroglyphs around Cape Alitak. The Alitak glyphs are the largest
cluster of stationary rock art in the Kodiak region, with over 700
images pecked into shoreline bolders. This is critical work, as the
glyphs are fading with time.
Alutiiq Collections Surveys
In the ninetenth century, American and European traders collected
Alutiiq objects, sending items to
museums around the world. There are pieces of Alutiiq heritage stored
in places like New England, California, Russia, France, Great Brittian, Finland,
and Germany. Alutiiq Museum Executive Director
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is working to reunite Alutiiq people with these pieces. By
traveling to distant museums and documenting Alutiiq objects, he is
bringing information home and forming friendships so that items can one
day travel to Kodiak. His photos and notes provide information for
museum exhibits and programs, inspiration for artists, and a sense of
pride for all Alutiiqs.
LEARN MORE: You can visit Alutiiq masks from France's Pinart collection at the Giinaquq - Like A Face on line exhibition.
Site Stewardship Program
Archaeological sites are a non-renewable resource. Once disturbed, the information they hold is lost forever. Since 1998,
museum archaeologists have partnered with the US Fish & Wildlife
Service to document the condition of archaeological sites in the Kodiak
National Wildlife Refuge. With the help of 46 volunteer families, our
team has evaluated 407 sites through 805 individual site visits. This
represents nearly 47% of all the known sites in the archipelago! More
importantly, monitoring by stewards and public education by the museum
have slowed the rate of destrictive, illegal site vandalism.
Contact curator
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, 907-486-7004, x23, to volunteer with the stewardhip team.
Quyanaa to our 2009 Site Stewards Suzanne Abraham, Bill Barker, Eva Holm, Betsey Myrick, Adelia Myrick, Susan Payne & Don Dumm, Sid Omlid, Richard Saltonstall, Leigh Thomet, Mark Withrow, and Jack Withrow.
Womens Bay Archaeological Project
Archaeological sites are like books, each one has a unique story to
tell. By studying many sites in the same region, Alutiiq Museum
archaeologists
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and
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are gaining a fuller picture of prehistoric life. They are building a
library of information for one area. Their research focuses on Womens
Bay, and arm of larger Chiniak Bay. Here they have been excavating
sites that span Kodiak's 7,500 year's of human history to better
understand the development of settlement village life. When did
Alutiiqs begin to live in permanent houses? When did they begin to
store great quantities of food for the winter?
Since 1997, the archaeologists have excavated samples
from six sites in different environments within the bay - working at
the Blisky site on Near Island, the Outlet and Array sites on the Buskin River, Zaimka Mound and
Mikt’sqaaq Angayuk
at the bay mouth, and Salonie Mound and Bruhn Point in the inner bay.
Volunteers, students and interns participate in the resarch as part of the museum's Community Archaeology Program.
The Kodiak archipelago
has more than 1,700 cultural sites.
That’s a huge number, even for a region as large as Kodiak. What are all these sites? A quick review of the state’s inventory
indicates that nearly half are historic features – buildings, roads, and other
relatively recent features associated with Kodiak’s Russian and World War II
heritage. The remaining 900 are
prehistoric sites. These deposits
document ancient Alutiiq history and they represent a whopping 7% of the known
prehistoric settlements in all of Alaska.
Kodiak has a rich archaeological record.
How do land manager care
for such a wealth of fragile, irreplaceable archaeological resources,
especially when they are spread across an enormous wilderness area? The US Fish & Wild Life Service
works with the Alutiiq Museum.
Together we recruit volunteers to monitor sites in the wilderness and
report what they see back to us.
It’s all part of our Site Stewardship program. Over the past 12 years, museum archaeologists and 46
volunteers families have documented 407 sites in over 800 individual site
visits. This work has helped us understand the forces impacting sites and to
research key area – before sites and their contents are washed away, destroyed
by digging bears, or damaged by human activity. Volunteers are literally helping the museum to preserve
Alutiiq heritage on the landscape.
Research at Mikt'sqaaq Angayuk - The Little Friend Site
Archaeologists, students, and volunteers broke open the Little Friend
site on July 20th, 2009, innaugerating the 13th season of the museum's
popular Community Archaeology program, with support from Leisnoi, Inc.
Eighteen people worked to expose an area covering 116 square meters, so
the Alutiiq ciqlluaq (sod house) burried beneath could be studied. Four weeks of research revealed a house with both Native and Western artifacts, dating to approximately AD 1820. Pottery from Russia, European glass beads, and artifacts associated with Western fire arms attest to the influence of European traders on the Alutiiq economy in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Yet slate ulus, banya rubble, stone wood working tools and the remains of cod fish dinners in the cozy sod house indicate that Alutiiq traditions persisted too. Click on "Read More" below to see additional photos andbrowse excavation notes by Curator Patrick Salontstall.
Sergie Korsun, Susan Malutin & Will Anderson outside the Kunstkamera Museum
What did you bring home from your last trip - a shirt, a cap, some jewelry, a poster, a piece of artwork? As long as people have traveled, they have collected souvenirs - mementos of the cultures and places they visited and gifts for those back home. The Russian explorers who came to Alaska in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were no different. Native artifacts intrigued Russian traders, who often bartered for objects or even commissioning the production of Russian style items from Alaskan materials. Similarly, explorers and scientists charged with collecting artifacts from the American continent acquired a great variety of Alaska Natives items. What happened to all of these materials? Many made it back to Russia and to museums in St. Petersburg, the nation’s former capital.
Karluk Lake is about as far from the coast as you can get on Kodiak Island, particularly the southern end of the lake. Yet Alutiiq Museum archaeologists believe Alutiiq people once lived on the lake – in the wintertime! This past May, Museum Curator Patrick Saltonstall set off to investigate with a grant from the US Fish & Wildlife Service.
Saltonstall explains. “Although Kodiak’s interior is not a focus of modern settlement, there are lots of important resources in the interior, and many of them are available in the cold seasons when it’s difficult to hunt and fish in the ocean. If you think about feeding your family, it makes a lot of sense to live on one of Kodiak’s lakes in the winter.”
This perspective is relatively new to Kodiak archaeologists, who have
focused on coastal sites and assumed that all settlements in the
interior were summer fish camps. But recent opportunities to study the
shores of Kodiak’s lakes and rivers tell a different story.
Research 
