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Dinner 1,000 Years Ago - by Molly Odell
Shells and bones speak – at least that’s what archaeologists think. In the piles of clamshells and fish bones left on Kodiak’s coast by ancient peoples, there are clues to the past. Archaeologists can extract amazing details from old garbage, identifying what people ate, finding the season resources were harvested, reconstructing butchery patterns, and even noting changes in climate.
Recent excavations at the Mikts’qaaq Angayuk site at Cliff Point provided the Alutiiq Museum with two very different samples of old garbage (also known as midden) from the same spot, each with a different story to tell. There were two main layers of midden at the site. The oldest dated to 1,000 years ago. The other was from about AD 1820, during Kodiak’s Russian period.
The 1,000 years layer was composed almost entirely of shell. Butter clams were the most common shell remains, but there were also mussels, chitons, cockles, sea urchins, and a variety of snails. Fish bones were only a small portion of this layer and included the remains of cod and salmon. Only a few mammal and bird bones were found. Because Alutiiq people likely avoided clams and mussels in summer months when the risk of paralytic shellfish poisoning was high, and when other food was abundant, the large number of clams and mussels suggest this layer represents a winter settlement.
In contrast, Pacific cod bones dominated the AD 1820 layer, with a small amounts of salmon, Saffron cod, Walleye Pollock, sculpin, halibut, flounder, and a variety of shellfish similar to those found in the older layer. There were also very few mammal and bird bones from the 1820 layer. In contrast to the older layer, the dominance of cod suggests that this site was occupied in the spring when Pacific cod spawn in the bay directly in front of Mikts’qaaq Angayuk.
The shell and animal bone from this midden tell us that people used the site for very different purposes at different times.
Photo: Katie Botz excavates in the shell midden at Mikts’qaaq Angayuk 2010.
