The Alutiiq Museum in Kodiak has multiple archaeological sites around Karluk Lake and River on the south side of the island. A team excavating one site has found tools that likely date back about 7,800 years – about 300 years older than the previous oldest artifacts.
Molly Odell is the museum’s director of archaeology.
“This is a small campsite near Kaluk River, where it flows out from Karluk Lake,” she said. “And what we found that dates to about 7800 years ago is a small hearth – so just less than a foot in diameter.”
The age of the newly found artifacts means it’s possible ancient Alutiiq ancestors settled in the area close to when others settled on the Kenai Peninsula.
“There are what are interpreted as ancestral Alutiiq sites that are this age, 7,700 to 7,800 from the Kachemak Bay area, and so it is very reasonable to assume that ancestors of the Alutiiq People were also in Kodiak around that time,” Odell said.
The results come from carbon dating charcoal from a hearth and tools at the site. Radioactivity from the biological material can tell archaeologists about when the tree the charcoal came from died.
Odell said it’s possible the tree could have been floating around a long time before it was burned. But it’s more likely there wasn’t much time between when the tree died and when it was burned.
“In this particular location at Karluk Lake, these two events should be fairly close together in time,” she said.
The museum’s team found a few other artifacts in the same area too – like a stone blade. Odell said she expects there could be similar sites and artifacts there that have yet to be discovered.
“We’ve known for a long time that there could be older stuff that just hasn’t been found or hasn’t been radiocarbon dated yet,” she said. “So I think it’s important to keep in mind that there almost certainly are other sites of this age – or perhaps even older – that just haven’t been documented yet.”
But finding them could be tricky.
“We actually didn’t know we were going to find such old material there because those sites that are over 5, 6, (or) 7 thousand years old, they’re usually deeply buried and sometimes they can be underneath more recent sites,” Odell said.
The Alutiiq Museum’s archaeology team has been working the area for about the last six years in a partnership with Koniag, Kodiak’s regional Native corporation.
Odell said museum staff will likely keep studying the area for years to come as well.
