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572.05
FA

N.S.

no. 22-27
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FIEI

pnthropology

i.s
10.24

NEW SERIES, NO. 24

Paugvik: A Nineteenth-Century Native Village on
Bristol Bay, Alaska

Don E. Dumond
James W. VanStone

Published August 31, 1995
Publication 1467

PUBLISHED BY 1 iJbJLD MUSEUM ut inai

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Croat, T. B. 1978. Flora of Barro Colorado Island. Stanford University Press, Stanford, Calif., 943 pp.
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1 I y„- ("orest structure, physiognomy, and floristics. Journal of Ecology, 51: 567-601.
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FIELDIANA

Anthropology

NEW SERIES, NO. 24

Paugvik: A Nineteenth-Century Native Village on
Bristol Bay, Alaska

Don E. Dumond

Professor Emeritus
Department of Anthropology
University of Oregon
Eugene, Oregon 97403-1218

James W. VanStone

Curator Emeritus
Department of Anthropology
Field Museum of Natural History
Chicago, Illinois 60605-2496

Accepted October 28, 1994
Published August 31, 1995
Publication 1467

PUBLISHED BY FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

ISSN 0071-4739
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

M.S. .

.>.

Table of Contents

1 . History of the Region 1

The Region and Its People 1

Russian Explorations 4

The Aglurmiut 4

Russian Explorers at Paugvik 6

Paugvik and the Fur Trade 7

The Russian Orthodox Church 8

Paugvik in the American Period 9

2. History of Archaeological Research ..15

Work Before 1985 15

Summary of the 1985 Field Season 18

Mapping 18

Excavations 19

3. Excavation Detail 21

Trench 1 21

House 1 22

House lA 23

House 2 25

House 2A 25

House 3 27

House 4 27

House 5 29

House 6, Area 6A 29

Trench 4 30

Stratification of Cultural Features 31

4. Collections 33

Procurement Network 33

Hunting 33

Fishing 43

Trapping 44

Transportation 44

Maintenance Network 45

Tools 45

Household Equipment 48

Personal Adornment 53

Smoking Complex 57

Toys 57

Ceremonial Objects 57

Miscellaneous 58

Protective Network 58

Clothing 58

Imported Building Materials 59

Unidentified Objects 59

Wood 59

Antler, Ivory, Bone 59

Miscellaneous Debris 60

5. Paugvik in Historical Context 91

Subsistence 91

Mammals 91

Birds 92

Fishes 93

Shellfish 93

Vegetal Foods 94

Conclusion 94

The Fur Trade 95

Seasonality 95

Dating 96

Ceramics 96

Beads 96

Metal 97

Glass 97

Summary and Conclusions 97

Paugvik in the Russian Period 98

Relations with Neighbors 99

Acknowledgments 101

Literature Cited 102

Appendix 106

List of Illustrations

1. Map of the Alaska Peninsula 2

2. Map of southwest Alaska showing ethnic
groups 5

3. Takhuty natives of the Naknek River re-
gion 6

4. Native houses near Naknek, 1900 10

5. Native houses and fish-drying racks near
South Naknek, 1900 11

6. Native house and cache, 1900 12

7. Aerial view of the Paugvik site and en-
virons 16

8. Contour map of the Paugvik site 17

9. Profile of the major occupation area at
Paugvik 18

1 0. Profile of a portion of Trench 1 22

1 1 . Plan and sections of Houses 1 and 1 A . . 24

12. Plan and sections of Houses 2 and 2 A . . 26

13. Plan and sections of House 3 28

14. Plan and profiles of House 6 30

1 5. Toggle harpoon head 40

16. Harpoon parts, float parts, arrowheads,
bow, wound plug 62

17. Boat hook, end blades, arrow parts, gun
part, fishing items 63

1 8. Kayak deck beam, net weights, sled shoes,
showshoe part 64

19. Pelt stretchers 65

20. Sled upright, umiak part, wedges 66

21. Sled runner, wedges, sled stanchion .... 67

22. Maul, axe heads, wedge, whetstone .... 68

23. Knife parts, skin scraper blade blank,
whetstones, engraving tool 69

24. Whetstone 70

25. Ulus, scrapers or knives, awls, pick or
mattock blade 71

26. Pick or mattock blade, compound vessel,
shovel blade 72

27. Snow beaters, rake prong, ice pick or chis-
el 73

28. Compound vessel parts 74

29. Spoons, lamp, float and bag nozzles, com-
pound vessel part, lug 75

30. Dippers, spoon, ladles, kettle rim frag-
ment 76

3 1 . Mat or bag fragment 77

32. Mat or bag fragment 77

33. Mat or bag fragment 77

34. Braided grass cordage 78

35. Braided grass cordage 78

36. Lamps 79

37. Lamps 80

38. Chinaware fragments 81

39. Native pottery profiles 82

40. Mask, figurines, respirator 83

4 1 . Skin and shoe fragments, buttons, knotted
sealskin 84

42. Unidentified objects 85

43. Unidentified objects 86

44. Harpoon parts, knife blade, bow frag-
ment, arrowhead 87

45. Ulu handle, kettle lug, knife blade, mask
part, engraving tool, brass box, spoons,
kettle lid, wedge, kayak part 88

46. Projectile point, bifaces, end blades, stone
saw, slate blanks, adze blade, ulu blade,
skin scraper blade 89

47. Chapel at Naknek, 1900 98

List of Tables

1. Potentially time-sensitive artifacts from
Trench 1 23

2. Distribution of artifacts and detritus ... 34

3. Chinaware sherds from 1985 excavations
52

4. Glass beads from 1985 excavations .... 54

5. Types and varieties of beads in the 1985
sample 56

6. Comaline d' Aleppo beads from south-
western Alaskan sites 56

7. Rotation analysis of six hearths 61 -^

8. Faunal remains by numbers of elements
and individuals 92

9. Birds and fishes identified from previous
work 94

10. Proportions of mammal foods probably
available 95

1 1 . Counts of potsherds from sites in south-
western Alaska 96

Paugvik village is well represented in Russian records from
southwestern Alaska, suggesting that it was an important
settlement in the 19th century. Excavations in 1985 cleared
all or parts of nine houses, where faunal and other evidence
indicates participation in the commercial fur trade. Although
glass trade beads were present throughout, there were rela-
tively few other industrial trade items and a profusion of
objects of traditional native manufacture. Collections, site
layout, and historical documents suggest the village was oc-
cupied from after a.d. 1800 to about 1870.

History of the Region

Herein we report the results of archaeological
excavations at the 1 9th-century native set-
tlement of Paugvik on the Alaska Peninsula in
southwestern Alaska. The major fieldwork was in
1985, when a crew of six devoted two months to
excavations at the settlement. In describing the
Paugvik collections, however, we have added to
materials of 1985 those recovered in abbreviated
tests at the site in 1961 and 1973. Although our
aim is primarily to describe these archaeological
results, we also attempt in a preliminary way to
place the people of Paugvik within their social and
economic surroundings.

The Region and Its People

The Alaska Peninsula juts southwestward from the
Alaska mainland and, with its partly submerged
extension in the long chain of Aleutian Islands,
forms the boundary between the Bering Sea on the
north and the Pacific Ocean on the south (Fig. 1 ).
Toward its wider, northeastern end the peninsula
is 160 km or more in width. Throughout its length
its backbone is the Aleutian Range of volcanic
mountains, peaks of which rise to elevations above
1 800 m and form a divide that in the northeast is
15-25 km from the abrupt, fjorded coast of Shel-
ikof Strait on the Pacific but as much as 145 km
from the coast on Bristol Bay of the Bering Sea.
Toward that coast the ground slopes as a soggy
plain built by outwash of the Pleistocene glaciers
that carved the basins of the lakes that now stretch
in series along the northwestern foot of the moun-
tains, which is the source of meandering streams
and the spectacular runs of red or sockeye salmon
for which Bristol Bay is famous.

The village of Paugvik was located on the right
bank of the Naknek River 1 km above its mouth
on Bristol Bay and 2 km below the modem village
of Naknek. Bristol Bay forms the southeast comer
of the Bering Sea, and the flat peninsula coastal
plain and shallow seas partake of the arctic climate
of the north. The plain is treeless and tundra cov-
ered, save for a few protected spots in stream val-
leys where pioneer stands of stunted spruce ap-
pear. On the bay there is a substantial ice cover
for much of normal winters. Summers are punc-
tuated by periodic storms that rage inland from
the unpredictable Bering Sea.

Faunal food resources are plentiful in the region.
Although the shallow seas of the upper bay dis-
courage the approach of larger whales and other
sea mammals— walrus, for instance, are found no
closer than 200 km to the west, where they haul
out in summer on islands fronting Togiak Bay-
harbor seals are abundant, and beluga (white
whales) inhabit Bristol Bay the year around, cours-
ing up the Naknek River in spring and summer
in pursuit of mns of smelt and salmon. Some clam
species are available in the upper bay, with mussel
colonies on intertidal rocks such as those visible
at the mouth of the Naknek at low tide. Seabirds
and migratory waterfowl are also plentiful in sea-
son.

The major Alaska Peninsula caribou herd calves
in spring in the lowlands of the Bering Sea plain
near Port Heiden. In early fall the herd drifts
northeastward to winter, usually between the Uga-
shik and Naknek rivers, although in the mid- 19th-
century caribou were so numerous that they would
move seasonally across the Naknek and even the
Kvichak River (Hemming, 1971, pp. 39^4). But
the most dependable and major resource is pro-
vided by the five species of Pacific salmon, which

History of the Region 1

Fig. 1 . Map of the Alaska Peninsula.

are present in great numbers in streams during
their migrations and also available offshore in
Bristol Bay. Runs begin in early June with king or
Chinook salmon, continue through July with sock-
eye (red) and chum (dog) salmon, and last through
August with pink and silver (coho) salmon (UA,
1974, pp. 422-440). Although all of these species
occur in the Naknek River, red salmon are es-
pecially plentiful, with annual upstream escape-
ments even under modem fishery pressure running
well over 1 million fish (ADFG, 1991); in aborig-
inal times the runs into the river must have been
substantially larger. Smelt also run into the Nak-
nek in spring or early summer, and freshwater fish
are abundant, including salmonids, such as rain-
bow trout and char, grayling, pike, and whitefish
(UA, 1974, p. 444).

The upper peninsula lies within the region of
aboriginal Western Eskimo or Yupik speech.
Nineteenth-century Paugvik itself was occupied
by people referred to in the most modem literature
as Aglurmiut, known to the Russians as Agleg-
miut. Their nearest ethnic and dialectic neighbors
were the Aglurmiut of settlements located at the
mouth of the Egegik River on the peninsula coast

to the southwest, and near the mouth of the Nush-
agak River across Bristol Bay. These Aglurmiut
were the southemmost speakers of the language
designated Central Yupik (Krauss, 1982). They
were reported by the early Russians to have been
driven from the lower Kuskokwim River vicinity
in a series of bloody battles of the late 1 8th century,
known more recently in Kuskokwim native tra-
dition as the "bow and arrow wars" (see, for in-
stance, Ackerman & Ackerman, 1973; Fienup-
Riordan, 1990). Although some early U.S. sources
credited the Aglurmiut or Aglegmiut with control
of all of the Bering Sea slope of the northem Alaska
Peninsula (e.g., Petroff, 1881, 1884; Porter, 1893),
the Russians knew them to have been restricted
to the Bristol Bay littoral, from which they had
displaced people called by the Russians "Sever-
novtsy (Northemers) and Ugashentzy" (Wrangell,
1980, p. 64). Although the second of these were
people of the Ugashik River located well to the T
southwest of the region of immediate interest here
(Fig. 2), the former were people of the upper por-
tion of the Naknek River drainage and hence of
relevance to the condition of Paugvik and its
neighborhood.

About 1 00 km above Paugvik within the Nak-
nek River drainage system, immediately above
Iliuk Arm of Naknek Lake and in the geographic
center of the peninsula, was the multi village com-
munity called by the Americans Savonoski, known
to the earlier Russians as the Sevemovsk (i.e.,
northemer) settlements, with their inhabitants the
Severnovskie Aleuty, or Sevemovsk Aleuts. A sense
of contrast in the identities of people of these set-
tlements is made plain by records of births entered
by the Alaska Russian Church (ARC, 1 8 1 6-1936,
Nushagak mission) between the 1840s and 1895.
At Paugvik, births were recorded as 74% "Agleg-
miut," 21% Kusquqvagmiut (i.e., people of the
Kuskokwim River region), 2% Kiatagmiut (of the
upper drainage of the Nushagak River system or
the vicinity of Iliamna Lake), and 3% "Aleut." In
the Sevemovsk settlements, 92% were recorded as
"Aleut," 5% as "Aglegmiut," and 2% as Kiatag-
miut (see also Dumond, 1986, p. 5).

There may have been some tradition of hostility
between villages at the two extremes of the Naknek
Lake and River system, as indicated by the Rus-
sian accounts of Aglurmiut history. In 1953 a Sev-
emovsk native alleged that in very old days the
two peoples had fought each other with bow and
arrow. In those same olden days, he said, the peo-
ple of the lower Naknek River never went up-
stream, and the Sevemovsk people never went

Part One

downriver but repaired to the Pacific coast rather
than to Bristol Bay to hunt sea mammals (Davis,
1954). A similar course for trading was reported
for the Sevemovsk people in the 1 880s by the first
U.S. census official in the region, Ivan Petroff, who
remarked that

the people of two villages ... in the vicinity of lake
Walker [his designation for Naknek Lake] came down
to Katmai [on Shelikof Strait] to do their shopping and
to dispose of their furs, undertaking a very fatiguing
tramp over mountains and glaciers and across deep and
dangerous streams in preference to the canoe journey to
the Bristol Bay stations. (Petroff, 1884, p. 25)

And he reported a local tradition in which hostil-
ities probably involving the two Naknek River
peoples are alluded to, when at a feeder stream of
Naknek Lake there was

a night attack made by the "bloodthirsty" Aleuts long
years ago, when every soul in the place was dispatched
without mercy, with the exception of one man, who hid
himself under a waterfall close by, and thus survived to
tell the tale. (Petroff, 1884, p. 24)

In 1912 the violent volcanic eruption in the vi-
cinity of Mt. Katmai, which deposited 30 cm or
more of pumice and ash on upper Naknek Lake,
caused the permanent abandonment of the two
Sevemovsk settlements then occupied. Despite any
residual hostile feeling for the 20th-century de-
scendants of the Aglurmiut, most of the survivors
relocated on the left bank of the Naknek River 10
km above Naknek village. Not only had the Sev-
emovsk people fled there as the emption began,
but canneries on the lower Naknek promised oc-
casional employment, and the Pacific coastal set-
tlements they had been inclined to visit in earlier
times were totally destroyed by the emption.

Unlike the people of Paugvik and their descen-
dants, the social and linguistic affinity of the Sev-
emovsk people is not clear in generally available
sources. However, the matter is important to some
considerations stemming from the work reported
here and will be pursued briefly.

When the Russian fur hunters followed the path
of Vitus Bering to the New World after his unlucky
voyage of 1741-1742, they applied their appel-
lation "Aleut" to native peoples of what we now
know as the Aleutian Islands— peoples who spoke
one or more languages that are now called (after
the Russian innovation) Aleut (Fig. 2). But as the
Russians moved eastward around the northem edge
of the Pacific, they applied the same term, Aleut,
to people they met on Kodiak Island. These were

a people who spoke a language entirely unintelli-
gible to natives of the Aleutian Islands. It is now
recognized as the southemmost of the Yupik lan-
guages and designated Alutiiq or Sugpiaq, and the
people are called Koniag. The Russian fur hunters
also applied the designator "Aleut" to the Eskimo-
speaking peoples they began to meet on the Alaska
Peninsula (shown as Peninsula Eskimo in Fig. 2).
This practice continued until they had crossed the
peninsula to the Bering Sea, where they gave sep-
arate ethnic designations to the larger ethnolin-
guistic groups, such as Kusquqvagmiut of the Kus-
kokwim, Kiatagmiut of the upper reaches of the
Nushagak, Wood, and Kvichak rivers, and
"Aglegmiut" of the Bristol Bay coast.

Is there, then, any affinity implied among those
Eskimo-speaking peoples they had designated as
Aleuts— a designation applied from Kodiak in the
south to people of the Ugashik River and of the
Sevemovsk settlements of the Naknek drainage in
the north?

Certainly the native people of the Pacific coast
of the Alaska Peninsula were related to those of
Kodiak. As one traveler in the first decade of the
19th century reported of people of the peninsula's
Kukak Bay (as near to the Sevemovsk settlements
as was Katmai), "the customs, the manners, and
in a great degree the clothing and language . . . are
the same as those of the people of Kodiak" (Langs-
dorff, 1814, II, p. 236). And in census and vital
statistics documents of the Russian Orthodox
church (ARC, 1733-1938, 18 16-1 936), the people
of that coast were as often as not referred to as
"Kodiak Aleuts." With regard to people farther
north on the peninsula, at least one 1 9th-century
traveler reported a dialectal difference between
Sevemovsk people and those of Katmai (Spurr,
1900, pp. 92-93), although in recent decades na-
tive informants in Naknek village have reported
that natives of the Sevemovsk villages spoke a
language essentially identical to that of both Ko-
diak and Ugashik but differing in significant re-
spects from speech current around Naknek in the
earlier years of this century (Dumond, fieldnotes
of 1974, 1985). In 1961, an account of the 1912
Katmai emption was recorded in the native speech
of one of the few surviving members of the original
Sevemovsk migrants to the lower Naknek River,
a woman who was bom in a Sevemovsk settlement
in 1 879 according to church records (ARC, 1816-
1936, Nushagak mission). This account has been
recognized to be in Alutiiq, although with some
Central Yupik elements (Michael Krauss, personal
communication to Dumond, 1979). Thus it seems

History of the Region

reasonable to conclude that the people of both the
Sevemovsk villages and Ugashik (i.e., the Penin-
sula Eskimo of Fig. 2), like those of Kodiak (the
Koniag), were native speakers of some form of
Alutiiq. It also seems reasonable to conclude that
the Russian ethnic designator "Aleut," when ap-
plied to Eskimo-speaking peoples, was reserved
for speakers of that same language.

Seen in this way, the designation of the upper
Naknek community by the Russian fur hunters
and priests as "northerner settlements" makes
considerable sense. The Sevemovsk people were
the northernmost of the "Aleuts" or Alutiiq speak-
ers, their villages located directly north of and ac-
cessible by trail from the Russian-controlled hunt-
ing station of Katmai on the Pacific coast. As Alu-
tiiq-speaking southerners, however, they contrast-
ed with the Central Yupik Aglurmiut of Paugvik,
who may now be seen to have occupied a beach-
head in enemy territory until peace was imposed
by the Russians.

Russian Explorations

As early as the mid- 1 8th century, Russian fur trad-
ers began to expand into areas north of the Gulf
of Alaska. The tip and the southern shore of the
Alaska Peninsula were to some extent within the
Russian sphere of influence by 1 76 1 , possibly even
earlier. In 1 799 the Bristol Bay-Iliamna Lake area
was controlled by the Lebedev-Lastochkin Com-
pany, and some areas of Bristol Bay probably were
explored during the last two decades of the 1 8th
century (Black, 1984, p. 27).

Early in the 19th century, as the number of fur-
bearing animals declined in traditionally exploited
regions, the Russian-American Company focused
its attention on the vast area of southwestern Alas-
ka north of the Alaska Peninsula. There, they be-
lieved, new profits could be achieved through trade
with the Eskimo and Indian inhabitants for beaver
pelts and other furs. The company dispatched an
expedition in April 1818 under the command of
Petr Korsakovskiy to explore part of the Alaska
Peninsula and the coast from uppermost Bristol
Bay to the mouth of the Kuskokwim River. The
party crossed the peninsula at what is now known
as Becharof Lake and moved down its outlet stream
to Bristol Bay. In August, leaving some of his party
at the mouth of the Nushagak River, Korsakov-
skiy led a detachment eastward to lakes Iliamna
and Clark. On Iliamna Lake he met Eremy Ro-

dionov, a local trader, who offered to lead a small
party north into the interior, a difficult journey
during which they may have reached the Kusko-
kwim River. In the fall Korsakovskiy and his men
returned to Kodiak Island by way of Iliamna Lake
(VanStone, ed., 1988).

In the summer of 1819 Korsakovskiy led an-
other exploring party to Bristol Bay. The party
planned to explore the Kuskokwim River, but for
a variety of reasons was not successful. The 1819
expedition did, however, establish a trading post,
Aleksandrovskiy Redoubt, at the mouth of the
Nushagak River at what would become the site of
the mission and settlement of Nushagak (Fig. 1).
Fedor Kolmakov, a company employee who had
accompanied Korsakovskiy on both his expedi-
tions, was placed in charge (Fedorova, 1973a, p.
8; 1973b, pp. 68-69). The two expeditions of Kor-
sakovskiy and the coastal explorations undertaken
by V. S. Khromchenko and A. K. Etolin between
1819 and 1822 (VanStone, ed., 1973) provided
the Russian-American Company with its first re-
liable information concerning relations among na-
tive groups in the Bristol Bay region and the extent
to which they would be inffuenced by the estab-
lishment of Aleksandrovskiy Redoubt (Berkh,
1823a, pt. 2, pp. 1-20, 1823b; RAC/CS, vol. 3,
no. 164, 4 May 1823).

The Aglurmiut

The native people whom Korsakovskiy and other
explorers encountered on the upper Alaska Pen-
insula and in Bristol Bay were the Central Yupik-
speaking Aglurmiut or "Aglegmiut." Korsakov-
skiy brieffy described the Aglurmiut in his 1818
journal (VanStone, ed., 1988, pp. 29-31), and the
first published account of subcultural groups in the
Bristol Bay region was derived from the explorer's
1819 journal as reported by Berkh ( 1 823b). In this
account the coastal inhabitants are referred to as
"Glakmiut" and are said to have been constantly
at war with the Kusquqvagmiut of the Kuskokwim
River. V. S. Khromchenko, during his coastal ex-
plorations of southwestern Alaska, in 1822, noted
that the Aglurmiut were the most warlike people
along the coast between Bristol Bay and Norton
Sound. His account included a brief description
of their culture and a rather extensive vocabulary
(VanStone, ed., 1973, pp. 52-53). Wrangell (1970,
p. 1 7), Khlebnikov (Lyapunova & Fedorova, eds.,
1 979, p. 77), and early reports of the general man-

Part One

. ^ ^ y< ;^ ^- cv^Tl

;0 100

HHH t^ ^ i!<»W.

90 <oo

" " " I =J wyArf

Fig. 2. Map of southwest Alaska showing ethnic group distribution.

agers of the Russian-American Company (RAC/
CS, vol. 3, no. 164, 8 May 1823; vol. 9, no. 460,
31 October 1832) described how the Aglurmiut
were displaced by warfare from the Kuskokwim
River, some moving to Nunivak Island and others
settling in Bristol Bay.

Kromchenko was apparently the first explorer
to make a distinction between the coastal dwelling
Aglurmiut and the Kiatagmiut, who at the time
of contact inhabited the banks of the Nushagak
and Wood rivers (VanStone, ed., 1 973, p. 3 1). The
Kiatagmiut, having recently moved from the up-
per Kuskokwim (VanStone, ed., 1988, pp. 94, 105),
were, like their lower Kuskokwim River relatives
and presumably like the "Aleuts" of the Alaska
Peninsula, at war with the Aglurmiut. The exis-
tence of Aleksandrovskiy Redoubt and the efforts
of Fedor Kolmakov were instrumental in stabiliz-
ing relations between the Aglurmiut and their new
neighbors, thus permitting the former to hunt in-
land for caribou without fear of attack. Although
the Aglurmiut were experienced warriors, constant
battles with these neighbors had greatly reduced
their numbers, and they found a refuge with Kol-

makov at the trading post (Berkh, 1823b, p. 47;
VanStone, ed., 1973, p. 52). Under these circum-
stances, by 1832 the Aglurmiut were already be-
coming accustomed to the Russians, were learning
the Russian language, and were believed to be as
useful to the company as the Kodiak "Aleuts"
(RAC/CS, vol. 9, no. 460, folios 345-351, 31 Oc-
tober 1832; RAC/CR, vol. 9, no. 284, folios 11,
12, 30 March 1834).

The Aglurmiut population around Aleksan-
drovskiy Redoubt in 1 8 1 8 was about 60, a number
that grew to approximately 500 by 1 832, including
those living at the mouth of the Naknek River. In
1838 and 1839 a smallpox epidemic decimated
the population of southwestern Alaska and, in spite
of vaccinations administered in February 1838,
killed a reported 522 people in Aglurmiut settle-
ments near the redoubt, leaving only 35 1 survivors
(Sarafian, 1970, p. 226; Wrangell, 1970, p. 14).
Some of the earlier population numbers may have
been grossly underestimated, however, as sug-
gested by company reports of 1847 giving the
number of Aglurmiut as variously from 850 to
1,000 (Fedorova, 1973a, pp. 164-165).

History of the Region

, 'Hi /.\ in/i &/

./^HIKi' 111 II • hi hll •NtlhHi'lii ,-l.l ■ ' I'l. Itlfl .1 1 l.\'.ll 'I III

Fig. 3. Takhuty natives of the Naknek River region. Watercolor by Pavel Mikhailov, 1828, State Historical
Museum of Estonia (Tallinn); photo by L. A. Shur. Reproduced through the courtesy of Richard A. Pierce, with
permission of Alaska Northwest Publishing Co.

Russian Explorers at Paugvik

The primary Aglurmiut village on the Alaska Pen-
insula was Paugvik on the right (north) bank of
the Naknek River just above its mouth. It was
visited by Korsakovskiy in 1818 and appears on
I, Ya. Vasilev's map of his explorations in south-
west Alaska of 1829 (VanStone, ed., 1988, p. 76).
The earliest known depictions of Naknek River
people date from 1828 (Fig. 3).

Korsakovskiy was almost certainly not the first
Russian to visit Paugvik, however. In 1791 Dmi-
try Bocharov crossed the Alaska Peninsula in the
vicinity of the lake that now (in slightly modified
form) bears his name, and he may have visited
the settlement (Efimov, 1 964, map 1 80). Further-
more, it is apparent from Korsakovskiy's 1818
journal that at the time of his visit, natives of the
Naknek River region had been in contact with
Russian traders for some time. Sevemovsk toyons

(i.e., men recognized by the Russians as com-
munity leaders) were mentioned as present on Ko-
diak at the time of his departure, and on his arrival
at the Shelikof Strait hunting station of Katmai an
"Aglegmiut" girl was referred to (VanStone, ed.,
1 988, p. 1 8). In describing his departure from Kat-
mai on 1 9 May (OS), the explorer mentioned that
his party was accompanied by "an Indian [Sev-
emovsk?] toyon who acted as Kolmakov's guide
to the Aglegmiut Indian settlement [probably
Paugvik] and was used to taking fur goods to Kat-
mai." This native was said to have worked for the
company for many years (VanStone, ed., 1988, p.
22). Korsakovskiy's comment may be taken to
suggest that at that time, Paugvik maintained re-
lations with the Russian-American Company
through the fur hunting and fishing artel at Katmai
on the southern shore of the Alaska Peninsula, but
possibly not with Sevemovsk people as interme-
diaries, for Korsakovskiy's party was led not over

Part One

Katmai Pass and the route along the Naknek Riv-
er, but rather across the more southerly Becharov
Lake and down its outlet stream to Bristol Bay.

On 2 June 1818, Korsakovskiy's party entered
the mouth of the Naknek River:

At the mouth, on the left bank there was an Aglegmiut
settlement. At once our toyon with an interpreter went
ashore, then all our baydarkas and, on command, we
saluted by firing blank cartridges from our pistols. The
local Indians greeted us joyfully and thanked us for pay-
ing them a visit. (VanStone, ed., 1988, p. 28)

Paugvik is on the right bank of the river, and al-
though there was a village directly opposite on the
left bank, designated "Kougumik" on Vasilev's
map (VanStone, ed., 1988, p. 76), it seems clear
that Korsakovskiy was referring to the bank that
was on his left hand as he entered the river mouth.
The following day Paugvik natives brought Kor-
sakovskiy's party food and received in return
"Chinese pearls, seed beads, and large beads."
Three local men promised to accompany the ex-
pedition and were given clothing and beads. A
dance was held on 5 June, with at least 400 natives
present (VanStone, ed., 1988, p. 28), a number
that may have included visitors from other vil-
lages. In any event, the earliest population figures
for Paugvik are Russian Church confessional reg-
isters that list 1 59 inhabitants in 1 850 (ARC, 1 733-
1938, Nushagak confessional registers, 1850), but
comparison with registers of later years makes it
clear that this is less than the total population,
which one projection would estimate at twice that
number or more, for the early 19th century (Du-
mond, 1986, Tables 5, 26).

Paugvik and the Fur Trade

Despite the establishment of Aleksandrovskiy Re-
doubt in 1819, the Paugvik natives may have con-
tinued to trade their furs at Katmai and may have
done so as late as 1832 (RAC/CS, vol. 9, no. 460,
folios 345-351, 31 October 1832). Not until 1851
was there a documented relationship between the
settlement and Aleksandrovskiy Redoubt. In that
year the general manager of the company, M. D.
Tebenkov, in a communication to the Kodiak of-
fice noted with apparent disgust that the Aglurmiut
were complaining about the prices paid for furs.
He also commented on their failure to provide
men for service to the company baydarshchik at
Aleksandrovskiy Redoubt, which had by then been

reduced to an odinochka, a post under a single
Russian or Creole official. Tebenkov threatened
to "drive away all the Aglegmiuts from Naknek
[River] and from the mouth of this river, namely
from Pagvyk, to their old places of habitation in
the neighborhood of the Kuskokvims" (RAC/CS,
vol. 32, no. 278, folios 132, 133, 20 April 1851).

Although specific information on the fur trade
at Paugvik is lacking, the records of the Russian-
American Company contain some information
concerning the methods by which the manager at
Aleksandrovskiy Redoubt dealt with natives of the
surrounding areas for furs. When new contacts were
made with villages like Paugvik, the manager at-
tempted to determine the toyons. These individ-
uals were given silver medals called "United Rus-
sia," with the Tsar's picture on one side, a certif-
icate designating the leader as a person of authority
recognized by the company, and occasional incen-
tive gifts. The post manager was warned against
handing out medals indiscriminately, was charged
with keeping a careful account of those medals he
did distribute, and was encouraged to retrieve them
from the families of toyons who died, so that they
might be awarded to others. The toyons were sup-
posed to be individuals who were respected by
their fellow villagers and whose friendly relations
with the Russians would benefit the company. A
toyon encouraged his fellow villagers to hunt and
bring their furs to the redoubt. Probably the toyons
never had as much authority in their communities
as the company's officials believed, but in one way
or another a faithful toyon could often encourage
hunters in his village to expend more energy in
the company's behalf than they might otherwise
have been inclined to do (RAC/CS, vol. 8, no.
322, folio 247, 23 May 1831; vol. 9, no. 460, folio
350, 3 October 1832; vol. 16, no. 467, folios 178,
179, 31 October 1838; vol. 17, nos. 387, 388, fo-
lios 370-372, 4 June 1839).

Although this was the traditional manner of
dealing for furs with inhabitants of Bristol Bay and
adjacent regions, the Russians also sent out hunt-
ing parties. In the summer of 1839, for example,
a party of Eskimos was sent from Aleksandrovskiy
Redoubt to hunt for beavers. The hunters were
paid a specific wage, and all furs taken belonged
to the company. This particular hunt was highly
successful, and the natives seemed to approve of
the arrangement (RAC/CS, vol. 1 8, no. 335, folios
314-317, 25 May 1840).

The most popular trade goods of the period were
tobacco, various kinds of dry goods, and beads of
various sizes and colors. Other goods bartered by

History of the Region

the Russians in western Alaska and likely to have
been included in the trading inventories at Alek-
sandrovskiy Redoubt at one time or another were
knives, iron spears, steel for striking a fire, needles,
combs, pipes, cooking pots, large cups, mirrors,
copper rings, earrings, bracelets of copper and iron,
leather pouches, pestles and mortars, small bells,
navy buttons, flannel blankets, objects referred to
as "Aleutian axes," and items of European cloth-
ing (Zagoskin, 1967, pp. 161-162).

Although not explicitly stated in the sources, it
is likely that the Aglurmiut of Paugvik, like natives
elsewhere in Alaska, were encouraged to become
indebted to the company to ensure that they would
have to trade with or work for the local post. The
more closely natives were bound to the company
and the more heavily they relied on the trader for
supplies and items of European manufacture, the
less likely they were to pursue traditional subsis-
tence activities to the exclusion of trapping. Cer-
tainly many traditional hunting techniques began
to be forgotten at this time. The company assumed
a paternal role, controlling goods that the natives
could obtain and carefully regulating how much
they were to receive. Aside from these generalities,
however, no details are known of the mechanics
of the fur trade at Aleksandrovskiy Redoubt, such
as relations between traders and natives, formal-
ities of trading procedures, inventories of trade
goods, or relative values of furs and trade goods.

In 1840, A. K. Etolin, the general manager of
the Russian-American Company, proposed to re-
duce the company's expenditures by consolidating
a number of the most remote posts. Aleksandrov-
skiy Redoubt would be reduced to an odinochka,
under a single baydarshchik and two or three
"Aleut" assistants. These men would be subor-
dinated to Nikolaevskiy Redoubt on Cook Inlet
from where they would be supplied with food and
trade goods by way of a small post on Iliamna
Lake (RAC/CS, vol. 23, no. 703, folio 554, 23
December 1844; DRHA, 1936-1938, vol. 1, pp.
365-366). Although this new arrangement must
have affected the trade at Paugvik, the precise na-
ture of these effects unfortunately cannot be de-
termined.

After an initial short period of importance as
the only company post north of the Alaska Pen-
insula, Aleksandrovskiy Redoubt lapsed into rel-
ative obscurity with the emergence of other posts
and the establishment of better lines of commu-
nication throughout southwest Alaska. The stra-
tegic location of Aleksandrovskiy Redoubt and the
efforts of Fedor Kolmakov brought about, within

a period of little more than 20 years, extensive
exposure of the natives of southwestern Alaska to
the fur trade. Acculturation was most rapid among
the Aglurmiut who lived closest to the post, in-
cluding the inhabitants of Paugvik.

The Russian Orthodox Church

During the 10 years following the establishment
of Aleksandrovskiy Redoubt, there is evidence that
Fedor Kolmakov baptized a small number of na-
tives, probably Aglurmiut, who were employees
of the Russian-American Company (Barsukov,
1886-1888, vol. 2, p. 36). In the spring of 1829
Bishop Ivan Veniaminov arrived at the redoubt
to visit the few Christians living there. When he
made a second visit three years later he learned
that Kolmakov had baptized 70 Eskimos from -^'
several villages. A small chapel was constructed
at the post in the same year (Barsukov, 1886-
1888, vol. 2, pp. 37^8).

The first reference to the Naknek region in sur-
viving church records appears to be in 1841, when
the Kodiak mission recorded in their vital statis-
tics notations a visit to the peninsula in which 57 -,
people were baptized at Katmai and an additional
46 (24 males and 2 1 females, ages 1-67) were bap-
tized in the Sevemovsk settlements (ARC, 1816-
1936, Kodiak, 1841); there is no indication that
the trip extended to Paugvik, however. In 1842
the first missionary was assigned to the Nushagak
mission (RAC/CS, vol. 21, nos. 28-30, folios 24-
27, 1 1 February 1842; no. 249, folios 183, 184, 9
May 1842; DRHA, 1936-1938, vol. 1, pp. 385-
386). At that time. Christians at the redoubt num-
bered about 200, and during the next three years
as many as 400 additional natives were baptized.
The priest began making trips into the interior and
perhaps to Paugvik. Apparently the Nushagak
mission district included Paugvik from the mis-
sion's founding, but it was three years later, in
1 844, that the Sevemovsk settlements and those .
of Ugashik were transferred to that mission from
Kodiak (ARC, 1733-1938, Nushagak, Bishop of
Kamchatka to Missionary of Nushagak Church,
1 4 July 1 844). Thereafter vital statistics and reg-
isters of communicants began to be maintained at
Nushagak for both Paugvik and the Sevemovsk
settlements, although whether these were uniform-
ly the results of annual visits of the priest or wheth-
er they involved visits of the Naknek people to
Nushagak is not known.

Part One

In the 1840s, when Aleksandrovskiy Redoubt
was reduced to an odinochka and subordinated to
Nikolaevskiy Redoubt on Cook Inlet, manager
Etolin wanted the priest at Nikolaevskiy to take
charge of the church at Nushagak. When Bishop
Veniaminov received this information he imme-
diately instructed the missionary at Nikolaevskiy
to make a trip to the mouth of the Naknek River
"to learn in detail all local conditions regarding
communications with Nushagak" (DRHA, 1936-
1938, vol. 1, pp. 364-366). This instruction sug-
gests that the Bishop was concerned particularly
about the Christians at Paugvik and whether they
could be served adequately when the missionary
was withdrawn from Nushagak. The church au-
thorities, however, in spite of suggestions of Etolin
for consolidating mission activity in the region,
decided after a brief interval to maintain a priest
at the Nushagak mission.

By 1848 there were 1,080 parishioners in the
Nushagak region and the Aglurmiut were consid-
ered to be the most faithful, sometimes traveling
great distances to attend services (RAC/CS, vol.
34, no. 382, folio 130, 6 June 1853; Barsukov,
1 897-1 90 1 , vol. 1 , p. 407). By 1 864 all the natives
in the villages that the Nushagak missionary was
able to visit were said to have been baptized
(DRHA, 1936-1938, vol. 1, p. 149). On 1 July
1865, the priest visited Paugvik (DRHA, 1936-
1938, vol. 1, p. 149), the first clearly documented
visit of a churchman to the settlement, but from
the regularity with which confessional registers for
that settlement were maintained after 1850, it
seems evident that such visits had taken place in
the past, even though a chapel was not constructed
until the 1870s (ARC, 1733-1938, Nushagak,
Church/Clergy Registers, Sts. Peter and Paul
Church, and Confessional Lists).

Paugvik in the American Period

In 1 867, following purchase of Alaska by the Unit-
ed States, the San Francisco firm of Hutchison,
Kohl and Company purchased the assets of the
Russian-American Company. This firm, which
operated the Nushagak post under its original name
for one or possibly two years, was soon reorgan-
ized to form the Alaska Commercial Company.
Like other American firms, it was not as generous
with credit as its predecessor. On Kodiak Island,
for example, the Alaska Commercial Company
and other traders, after following a credit policy

similar to that of the Russian-American Compa-
ny, suddenly shifted to an exchange business and
attempted to collect outstanding debts (DRHA,
1 936-1 938, vol. 2, pp. 1 86-1 87). Their native cus-
tomers thus found themselves billed for accounts
that they could not possibly pay for years. Because
the Alaska Commercial Company never had any
serious competition in the Nushagak River region,
they probably also abandoned the paternalistic
policies of the Russian-American Company in that
region and refused to allow their patrons to run
up large debts. Whatever the effect of this on the
people at Paugvik and other Nushagak-region vil-
lages, the Alaska Commercial Company post at
Nushagak maintained a moderately flourishing
trade at least through the remainder of the 1 9th
century. At various times between 1 880 and 1 890,
the post maintained outposts at Ugashik and To-
giak, and there could well have been one at Paug-
vik.

Charles Bryant, who visited Nushagak in 1868,
noted that beaver was the principal fur and that
more than 2,000 skins were taken in by the post
annually (Bryant & Mclntyre, 1 869, p. 36). During
the 1 870s beaver, muskrat, land otter, and red fox
seem to have been the most important fur-bearing
animals in the Nushagak region. There was also a
small trade in swansdown, and caribou skins were
dried and traded (Elliott, 1875, p. 40). Muskrats
seem to have been taken in increasing numbers
even though their value was low, and the traders
were compelled to accept these pelts in order to
be able to buy more valuable furs (Elliott, 1886,
p. 399).

A commercial development in Bristol Bay that
had a greater and more lasting effect on the natives
of the region than the fur trade was the salmon
fishing industry. All five species of Pacific salmon
make spawning runs into the rivers of Bristol Bay,
and of them red or sockeye salmon, which spawn
only in systems with freshwater lakes, are the most
important species commercially. Most of the riv-
ers flowing into Bristol Bay have numerous lakes
at their headwaters.

The earliest commercial fishing in the Bay was
carried out by the Alaska Commercial Company,
and the first cannery was established at Nushagak
in 1883 by the Arctic Packing Company. By 1903
there were 10 canneries in Nushagak Bay alone
(VanStone, 1 967, pp. 67-72). In the Naknek River
region commercial fishing began in 1890, when
salteries were established a short distance above
the river's mouth, on the left bank by the Arctic
Packing Company and on the right, about 2 km

History of the Region

AlbatroBS -Alaska-lOOO

Bristol Bay Dist .

uAt-iLLoi/ /Crc^'.L^yi

Fig. 4.
Archives.

Native houses near Naknek, 1 900. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service photo no. 22-FFA-2546, U.S. National

above Paugvik, by L. A. Pederson. In 1893 the
Arctic Packing Company saltery was sold to the
Alaska Packers Association, and the following year
a cannery was constructed at the same location.
In 1893 the Naknek Packing Company absorbed
the Pederson saltery and erected a cannery near it
(Moser, 1902, pp. 209-21 1).

From the beginning, operators of salmon can-
neries in Bristol Bay made little effort to utilize
the local labor supply. Most of the actual fishing
was by Euro-Americans who came to Alaska for
the fishing season and returned home when the
runs were over and the canneries had completed
their packs. The actual canning was done by im-
ported Chinese laborers, with supervisory posi-
tions held by Euro- Americans. As late as 1891
only an occasional native was employed by the
canneries, the Chinese being considered more re-
liable and methodical (VanStone, 1967, p. 73).

In 1 900 the cannery of the Alaska Packers As-
sociation on the Naknek River employed 58 Euro-
American fishermen and 54 Euro-American can-
nery workers, trap and beach men, and salters; 20
employees were local natives and 140 were Chi-
nese. In the same year the Naknek Packing Com-
pany across the river employed 60 Euro- American
fishermen and beach hands, while 1 2 Euro-Amer-
icans, 1 1 natives, and 1 3 1 Chinese worked in the
cannery (Moser, 1902, pp. 210-211). Although
relatively few native people were actually em-
ployed, the canneries attracted large numbers of
them during the fishing season. Board was sup-
plied to all natives employed, and this they cer-
tainly shared with their unemployed relatives.
Some of them also found it easier to harvest the
waste of the canneries than to make their own fish
traps. Missionaries and some government em-
ployees deplored the influence of the canneries on

Part One

Albatross - Alaska-1000
Bristol B»y Di»t •

'^j

■^,. ,; .„../^ ^^- ..ri itjij-iFiiuiiiTTi^"' '"^-^ ■

Fig. 5. Native houses and fish-drying racks near South Naknek, 1900. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service photo no.
22-FFA-2542, U.S. National Archives.

the natives, particularly the drinking and gambling
that were characteristic of the Chinese laborers
(VanStone, 1967, pp. 73-77).

Since the cannery of the Naknek Packing Com-
pany was only a short distance upstream from
Paugvik, it is certain to have had some effect on
the choice of locations for villagers' houses. Native
houses were certainly present on the hill west of
the cannery in 1 900 when photographs were taken
by U.S. Fish Commission employees (Fig. 4). Here,
as across the river near the Alaska Packers As-
sociation cannery, native settlements previously
located downstream would have begun to coalesce
around the new industrial establishments (Figs. 5,
6), creating a permanent change in local patterns
of settlement. As indicated in Part 5, however,
there is evidence that the shift upstream in fact
predated the establishment of any commercial fish
processing station.

Following the sale of Alaska, the Russian Or-

thodox Church had acted immediately to reduce
the number of its clergymen in the new American
territory, a move prompted by fear that the mis-
sions could not be effectively supplied after the
local demise of the Russian-American Company.
In 1868 the priest at Nushagak was withdrawn,
and the mission was left in the care of a lay reader
(DRHA, 1936-1938, vol. 1, pp. 153-251). But
within 1 0 years a priest had been reassigned (RAC/
CS, vol. 42, no. 445, foHo 166, 19 September 1860),
and during the priestless interval church mem-
bership in the Bristol Bay region continued to in-
crease. By 1878-1879 communicants appear to
have numbered nearly 2,400, making Nushagak
the second largest of the nine missions in the Alas-
ka diocese (DRHA, 1936-1938, vol. 1, p. 116).
But in 1 884 the Moravian Church entered the mis-
sion field in southwestern Alaska and three years
later established a school and mission, called Car-
mel, a few miles above the Nushagak Orthodox

History of the Region 1 1

AlbatroBT -Alapka-lOOO
Bristol Bay Diet .

t ' -

^^i-^.

Fig. 6. Native house and cache near South Naknek, 1900. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service photo no. 22-FPA-
2543, U.S. National Archives.

mission. The era when the Russian Orthodox
Church had a clear field in Alaska had come to an
end (VanStone, 1967, pp. 37^8).

During the last decades of the 19th century, the
Russian Orthodox priest at Nushagak continued
to visit the settlements under his jurisdiction, in-
cluding those of the Naknek region. In 1876 the
first chapel was under construction at Paugvik
(ARC, 1733-1938, Nushagak, Church/Clergy
Registers, Sts. Peter and Paul Church, 1876). In
January 1883, there is a record of a five-day visit
to Paugvik for "preaching and officiating" (DRHA,
1936-1938, vol. 2, pp. 144-145).

It appears impossible to determine with abso-
lute certainty the date of abandonment of Paugvik.
Withdrawal of the population probably was the
result of a gradual shift upstream, toward the lo-
cation of present Naknek and the first canneries,
although this shift must have predated the estab-
lishment of salteries or canneries. H. W. Elliott

(1886, p. 400), writing on the basis of a visit in
the early 1870s, noted that

[a]n old deserted settlement— ruins of Paugwik— marked
by the outlines of its cemetery, still is visible at the de-
bouchure of the Nakneck. With a strange disrespect for
the departed, those natives who live at an adjoining vil-
lage come over here to excavate salmon-holes in the
ancient graveyard, so that a process of moist rotting shall
take place prior to eating them.

Elliott may well have been describing two parts of
Paugvik, one of which was no longer occupied
even in the early 1870s. Although evidence for
two separate parts of the village known as Paugvik
is not as direct as might be wished, such a situation
seems to accord well with known facts.

On the one hand, a village of Paugvik (or of
some recognizable variation of that name) was
recorded in the 10th U.S. census of 1880 (said to
include two settlements but possibly meaning on

Part One

different sides of the river) with a total population
of 192 (Petrolf, 1884, p. 17); in the 1 1th census of
1890 as a single village entry, population 93, in-
cluding one white male (Porter, 1893, p. 5); in the
12th census of 1900 as population 94, including
two Norwegian males (U.S. Census, 1 900); and in
the 13th census of 1910 as population 74, includ-
ing one Norwegian male (U.S. Census, 1910). On
this basis, Paugvik would seem to have existed at
least until 1910.

On the other hand, when the archaeologist Helge
Larsen was conducting a reconnaissance in south-
western Alaska in the summer of 1 948 and stopped
in Naknek, he reportedly was told by the local
postmaster, who said he had lived in the village

since 1895, that the site Larsen— and later we—
excavated had been abandoned 20 years before his
own arrival in Naknek (Larsen, 1950, pp. 177-
178). Furthermore, the very postmaster from
whom that statement is reported is listed in the
1910 census enumeration sheets as living in Paug-
vik (U.S. Census, 1910, "Bugorwik" sheets, family
entry 79).

Considering all these circumstances, it seems
not only possible but likely that the Paugvik of the
U.S. census enumerators, at least of the later ones,
was not the 19th-century Paugvik in which our
excavations were focused. This interpretation is
entirely in accord with some of the results of those
excavations.

History of the Region 13

History of Archaeological Research

Work Before 1985

The Paugvik site was first examined from an an-
thropological viewpoint in 1931, when Ales
Hrdlicka of the Smithsonian Institution exhumed
a number of skeletons in the vicinity. His pho-
tographs of the site show it to be without any
identifiable structures, covered with grass like that
to be seen today, but flanked by a single large pond
where there are now two smaller ones (Hrdlicka,
1943, Fig. 224; see present Figs. 7, 8). He reported
that the bluff" on which the site was situated was
subject to active tidal erosion. He also noted the
presence of burials on two small ridges behind the
site (Hrdlicka, 1943, p. 351). Hrdlicka recovered
undecorated pottery and large quantities of clam
and mussel shells but noted that worked stone was
rare. He excavated a number of graves and ob-
served that the site covered at least two acres,
having been once much larger. Indeed, he indi-
cated belief that "on the whole the Russian influ-
ence appears to have been late and superficial, [for]
the settlement has plainly existed from long be-
fore" (Hrdlicka, 1943, pp. 386-388). Although he
apparently left no record of the exact location of
his excavations, his catalog of crania in the U.S.
National Museum lists seven males and eight fe-
males from Paugvik, or Pawik, in his rendering
(Hrdlicka, 1944, pp. 30-33).

In 1 948 the site was visited for a few days by
the Danish archaeologist Helge Larsen, who re-
ported briefly on his limited excavations in the
site he referred to as Pavik (Larsen, 1 950). In 1 96 1
Paugvik was tested by a party from the University
of Oregon that mapped the major habitation por-
tion of the site (the map was reproduced with mod-
ifications by Dumond, 1981, Fig. 4.2). The exca-
vations of that year were limited to a 1 x lO-m

trench no more than 1 m in depth, where it en-
countered sterile clay and silt of the glacial out-
wash that underlies the entire low-lying region along
Bristol Bay. Results were reported at the time in
abbreviated narratives (Dumond, 1962a, pp. 70-
71; 1962b, p. 17) but were incorporated in later
more complete descriptions (Dumond, 198 1). Us-
ing the terminology employed by Larsen (1950)
the historic-period archaeological component was
in 1961 formally designated the Pavik phase of
local culture, and this designation will continue to
be used for the defined archaeological phase, al-
though the name of the site itself is given as Paug-
vik, the spelling shown on the earliest maps of the
upper Alaska Peninsula.

Although Hrdlicka (1943) had indicated his be-
lief that the site was largely prehistoric, the Rus-
sian Church records and the results of both 1 948
and 1 96 1 excavations indicated the former settle-
ment to have been largely if not entirely of the
19th century. In 1961, however, three (of 356)
potsherds recovered from deposits containing
postcontact trade materials and Pavik phase ar-
tifacts were of a thick, gravel-tempered ceramic
type (now termed Naknek thick plain) that was
characteristic of the prehistoric Brooks River Camp
phase of culture of the Naknek region, which is
known to date between about a.d. 1 100 and 1450
(Dumond, 1981). This finding suggested that there
were at least some prehistoric occupation remains
to be found in the Paugvik vicinity, and in 1973,
when the University of Oregon was conducting an
archaeological survey and limited excavations
along the lower Naknek River, it seemed appro-
priate to test the site once again in search of more
definitive evidence of earlier occupation.

In 1973 a trench 1 x 18 m in extent was laid
out on the western side of the major rise of ground

History of Archaeological Research 1 5

■*" i U.UuiU^5(aSI!«

Fig. 7. Aerial view of the Paugvik site and environs. Cannery buildings are in left foreground; lower Naknek
River is on the left, with Bristol Bay visible in right background. The site is on the high j>ortion of the river bluff
seen in middle background above the pond to the left. Photo by James Thompson, 1985.

in the main part of the Paugvik site, in an area
that examination of the eroding river bluff indi-
cated contained thick deposits of midden but in
which there were no recognizable house depres-
sions. Two detached 1 x 2-m pits extended the
excavation line an additional 8 m to the east (Du-
mond, 1981, Fig. 4.2; present Fig. 9). In the trench
and its extensions, characteristic postcontact Pa-
vik phase artifacts were found in heavily streaked
brown midden soil in which layers of peaty sod
marked former ground surfaces. Beneath the
heaviest of these old sod layers in the continuous
trench, in places undisturbed by intrusions from
overlying Pavik levels, there was a layer of white
volcanic ash about 1 cm thick. This was thought
to be an ash that had been fairly securely dated to
about A.D. 1450 in the upper Naknek River drain-
age, where it immediately overlies cultural depos-
its of the Brooks River Camp phase.

In the lower, southwestern end of the trench the
excavation of 1973 was carried less than 1 m, at
which point sterile glacial outwash was encoun-
tered. There the upper surface of the glacial clays
was capped by a stratum of peat some 50 cm thick

that tapered upslope to the northeastward and
vanished entirely about 12 m along the trench
(Dumond, 1981, Fig. 4.3). This peat was inter-
preted as the remains of vegetation at the edge of
the kettle lake that once covered what is now the
dissected basin west of the hill, a counterpart of
the ponds that still remain east of it (Dumond,
1981, Fig. 4.2; present Fig. 9). In the higher, north-
eastern end and in the detached pits, sterile out-
wash was not reached by the end of the field sea-
son, with excavations carried to about 1.5 m below
the surface. The nature of the artifact-rich deposits
in the northeastern section of the continuous trench
strongly suggested the presence of a habitation noit
visible from the surface. A deeper test in a limited
area of the section revealed a trace of the white
volcanic ash only a few centimeters lower than the
trench floor.

Again, scattered potsherds of Brooks River Camp
phase type— now 1 5 in number (in a total of 356)—
were recovered, half of them from otherwise Pavik
phase deposits and half from the underlying peaty
layer at the western end of the trench. No datable
charcoal was recovered with the sherds, most of

Part Two

History of Archaeological Research 1 7

indistinct depression

outline of excavation or clearly defined depression

projected outline

House 4

Houses

20 meters

Fig. 9. Plot of the major occupation area at Paugvik.

which could represent items lost or discarded near
the edge of the former pond at a time well before
the establishment of the known historic Paugvik
settlement. Surveillance of the eroding river bluff
at the Paugvik site was maintained during the en-
suing 1974 field season, and a thin band of white
volcanic ash was discovered above scattered ar-
tifacts in the bluff immediately opposite the 1973
trench. A small excavation carried below the vol-
canic ash at that point yielded 14 Brooks River
Camp phase potsherds next to charcoal that pro-
duced a radiocarbon date of about a.d 1255 (695
± 65, SI-2070), finally providing some confir-
mation of prehistoric occupation at the site and
contributing to the identification of the white vol-
canic ash (Dumond, 1981, pp. 65-67). Neverthe-
less, it seemed clear that very few remains of any
such earlier occupation remained, presumably
having been erased by the heavy tidal erosion that
as late as the 1 970s was taking its toll on the bluff
in the area of heaviest 19th-century occupation.

In none of this work, however, had any attempt
been made systematically to sample the habitation
area of the site to determine its extent, nor had
any attempt been made to examine the surround-
ing area carefully to determine the probable lo-
cation of Hrdlicka's excavations. The need for some

such attempt became evident in 1 983, when a road
was constructed immediately north of the site to
connect the modem village of Naknek with a new
municipal sewage facility. Thus, in 1985, with fi-
nancial support from the Alaska Historic Preser-
vation Office, it was possible to expand the ex-
cavation program sufficiently to permit such ad-
ditional mapping and testing to be accomplished.

Summary of the 1985 Field Season

Mapping

Although major effort in 1985 was directed to the
excavation of houses and middens, a new contour
map of the Paugvik site also was plotted by alidade
and planetable, supplemented by the use of three
datum points at the same elevation— assigned an
arbitrary value of 100 m— from which triangula-
tions were made and elevations were measured
(Fig. 8). For outlying areas some elevations were
estimated by handlevel. In the actual area of the
10 well-defined house depressions, horizontal po-
sitions were pinpointed by extension of a single
metric grid system over the entire site, laid out

Part Two

with reference to the hne that had been established
for the trench of 1973 (Fig. 9).

To determine the area of actual major occupa-
tion, a soil sampling device with a 1-inch barrel
was used where soil conditions permitted. Because
the underlying sterile layer in the entire area is a
greenish, clay-laden till that is unmistakable even
in modest amounts, this small sampler was en-
tirely adequate where frost did not impede pene-
tration. Shovel tests were used where a larger ex-
posure was necessary. In the habitation area in
particular, the peaty soil was consistently frozen
beneath the thick layer of overlying sod (of Cal-
amagrostis canadensis [Canadian bluejoint]). Here
it was necessary to first cut away the sod to give
the underlying soil a chance to thaw enough that
either the shovel or the soil sampler could be used.

The southern edge of the site is on the bluff of
the Naknek River, which was actively eroding un-
til only recently, and on the face of that bluff the
signs of occupation could be traced in profile until
they disappeared both to the east and to the west.
North of the bluff and outside of the area marked
by surface depressions (in which the presence of
occupation was obvious), tests were made at ap-
proximately 10-m intervals as far north as the
westernmost of the two small ponds shown in Fig-
ure 8. Tests were made at about double this in-
terval in the area through the swale just west of
the obvious habitation area and also on the rela-
tively high ground east of the easternmost pond.
Both of these last areas were essentially devoid of
any trace of occupation debris, with glacial ma-
terial appearing within about 40 cm of the surface.

In the higher ground surrounding the habitation
area, a search was made for traces of earlier ex-
cavations. A total of 1 0 fairly clearly defined holes,
obviously dug a number of years ago, each about
30 X 1 20 cm in extent and 30 cm in depth, were
located in the area marked with the bold dashed
rectangle in Figure 8. In one of these a fragment
of tooth enamel gave evidence of the almost cer-
tain presence at one time of a buried human, sug-
gesting strongly that this was the place of Hrd-
licka's burial excavations. In the same area, seven
other depressions, smaller and less clearly delin-
eated, were also counted, but higher up the rising
ground to the west no additional depressions were
noted, and the soil testing revealed no burials that
could be identified.

Within the habitation area, the limit of signifi-
cant occupation debris is bounded by the 95-m
contour that appears as a thick line in Figure 8.
Within that area the location of debris was some-

what irregular, with occupation fill anywhere from
20 cm to 2 m in depth above the irregular surface
of the underlying glacial till. As a general rule, the
midden deposits appeared to be deepest between
the 97- and 99-m contours, although there were
exceptions: for instance, the knoll that lies between
the concentration of visible houses and the eastern
pond was almost devoid of midden on its summit.
The area of heaviest occupation trash was not sole-
ly confined to the immediate vicinity of visible
house depressions.

Excavations

Although no formal grid had been established in
1973, when the trench of that year was backfilled
the key stakes were driven completely into the
ground to permit relocation of the trench if de-
sired. In 1985 these were used to orient the ex-
cavation grid, which was labeled according to car-
dinal directions, although in fact the nominal grid
north was oriented 4 1 degrees west of magnetic
north, or about 20 degrees west of true. Unless
specifically indicated otherwise, the nominal ori-
entation will be used in the site descriptions here-
inafter.

Three houses were excavated completely, two
more were tested, and likely midden areas were
trenched. Traces were found of at least five and
possibly six additional houses that were not rec-
ognized on the surface. Because frost hampered
excavations throughout the season, the major ex-
cavation units were attacked for short periods at
a time, rotating from one to another as thawing
permitted.

Trench 1 of 1985 was 20 m in length, its (nom-
inal) south edge lying along the coordinate desig-
nated NIO, which was just 2 m north of the south
edge of the 1973 trench, and its west end (coor-
dinate E20) coinciding with the east end of the
continuous portion of that 1973 trench (Fig. 9).
Frozen ground was encountered a short way under
the sod.

House 1 was located at the highest point of the
knob on which the remains of the village were
discerned. Definition of the relatively shallow house
was clear except for the south comer, where an
earlier disturbance was encountered, the cause of
which was only later understood. Concurrent with
this excavation, sod was removed from House 2
and House 3, which were selected because they
were apparently completely undisturbed by loot-

History of Archaeological Research 19

ers' pits and because initial shovel tests showed
each of them to have well-defined floors in the
vicinity of substantial rock-lined central fireplaces.
The amount of frost remaining in all but the cen-
tral areas of their floors, however, dictated some
delay before excavations could begin in earnest.

As frost permitted, work in Trench 1 was con-
tinued until Pleistocene-age glacial till was en-
countered throughout, at depths varying from 1 .0
to more than 9 m. At its western end, the trench
penetrated the floor of a house, including a rock-
lined fireplace, that apparently had been perma-
nently frozen in its position beneath 1 m or more
of peaty overburden. In the course of the summer
a small area to the south of Trench 1 was opened
up to expose the hearth, and a larger expansion of
2 X 6 m was opened to the north, which was field-
designated Trench 2. At its opposite or eastern
end. Trench 1 penetrated a heavy deposit of wood
ash that suggested the presence of a house floor
underlying a portion of House 1 and might have
been responsible for the difficulty encountered in
defining one comer of that house. A 2 x 2-m area
was opened up in this vicinity to test this suppo-
sition; this small unit was then designated Trench 3.

Meanwhile, thawing had proceeded rapidly
enough in Houses 2 and 3 to permit a shift of the
crew to those units, while the newly opened trench-
es were allowed to thaw. The initial promise of
rapid clearance of the new houses, with their par-
ticularly well-marked floors, was not realized,
however.

House 2, in particular, had been excavated over
an earlier habitation (designated House 2A), which
had its subterranean entrance lying squarely be-
neath the stone-lined fireplace and its floor be-
neath the rear bench of House 2. House 2 itself
was both deeper and larger than expected, and the
complexity introduced by the underlying structure
caused considerable delay.

The excavation of House 3 also began decep-
tively, with the structure promising to be rather

small and shallow, although with some weU-pre-
served structural members and a fairly clear floor
deposit. Complexity arose particularly with the
discovery that the edges of Houses 2 and 3 had
either coincided or overlapped slightly. Further-
more, in the vicinity of their conjunction there
was also the buried entranceway to an earlier house,
the floor of which was never discovered. In ad-
dition, the northernmost comer of House 3 had
been cut away by a still later house or other stmc-
ture, which was so faintly indicated on the surface
as to have been imperceptible during our earlier
examinations.

Because of these complications, progress was
sufficiently delayed that full-scale excavations of
additional houses could not be undertaken. Trench
2 was cleared to underlying glacial till, exposing
about one third of the frozen floor of the buried
house, which is now designated House 6. The yield
of artifacts of organic material— wood, bone, fur,
baleen, etc.— was especially good from this house
floor and the adjacent area. Trench 3 was shallow,
but the excavation cleared the stone-lined fireplace
that had clearly pertained to the earlier house (now
House lA) that underlay portions of House 1.
Trench 4 was de-sodded to provide some sample
of the midden near the entries of Houses 2 and 3.

By this time the season was nearly over, and
additional sampling of the northeastem portion of
the site, in which we had intended to completely
excavate at least one relatively undisturbed house,
was perforce confined to the testing of two house
depressions (Houses 4 and 5). Both had only weak-
ly defined floors, although both also revealed the
large rock-lined fireplaces that were now recog-
nized as characteristic of the site. In Trench 4 an
area of 1 x 6 m, less than that originally opened,
was carried to a depth of about 1 m, at which time
sterile till had not been encountered, and the sea-
son was brought to an official close. AU excava-
tions were completely backfilled.

Part Two

Excavation Detail

Trench 1

In 1973 the main trench, which was 1 m wide,
had been laid out parallel to the bluff with its
nominal western end beginning at the base of the
western side of the hill on which the main house
remains of Paugvik could be discerned. The west-
ernmost 1 8-m section was opened as a continuous
trench, the 2-m segments of which were simply
designated sections 1 through 9, beginning at the
low western end. East of this, the trench was con-
tinued as two detached 2-m sections, which were
designated sections 1 1 and 1 3 (Fig. 9), but neither
was carried to the sterile layer because of ham-
pering frost. When the trench was backfilled at the
close of the season, some key stakes were pounded
into the ground to make relocation of the trench
possible if desired.

In 1985 Trench 1 was laid out with its nominal
southern edge (on the coordinate designated NIO
in the arbitrary grid of that year) exactly 2 m north
of the southern edge of the 1 973 trench, its western
end (at coordinate E20) coinciding with the eastern
end of section 9 of the 1 973 trench (Fig. 9). Twenty
meters to the east (at E40) the trench ended almost
exactly 1 m short of the edge of the depression at
the top of the hill that was designated House 1 .
Through intermittent excavation as permitted by
thawing, excavation of the trench was carried to
sterile glacial silt and till throughout its length; a
total of 27 m^ of material was removed.

As with all of the units excavated in 1985, the
trench was everywhere overlain by the pinkish
streak of volcanic ash marking the 1912 eruption
from the vicinity of Mount Katmai. The eastern
end of the trench was shallow, with glacial till,
clays, and loess encountered within 50 cm of the

surface in most of the area east of E36, although
in the southern wall of the easternmost meter of
the trench there was clear evidence of charcoal and
wood ash less than 20 cm below sod that marked
the northern edge of a hearth that pertained to the
house designated House lA.

At the opposite or nominal western end of the
trench, where midden overlay the glacial material
1 m or more in depth, a stone-lined hearth was
encountered that was considered probably a fea-
ture of the house that had been suspected to lie
beneath the eastern end of the 1973 trench, and
evidence of a vertical aboriginal cut 4 m to the
east of that hearth in Trench 1 was considered the
edge of the same house. This area of Trench 1 was
solidly frozen but slowly yielded plentiful scraps
of wood and twigs at the presumed house-floor
level. This excavation led to the opening of a 2 x
6-m section north of the east end of Trench 1 ,
which was designated Trench 2 in the field. This
new area was cleared to reveal additional portions
of what is here designated House 6.

In the 4.5-m section east of the eastern edge of
House 6, two more aboriginal cuts were found
(Fig. 10). The easternmost of these almost cer-
tainly represented a cut for the tunnel of a house
entrance, for at that point frozen remains of struc-
tural members were found slumped into a trench
of aboriginal date that crossed Trench 1 at about
right angles; to the west and stratigraphically later
was evidence of a second deep cut suspected of
having been a part of yet another house that had
in turn been partly obliterated when House 6 was
constructed (Fig. 10; some of the area designated
House 6A almost certainly pertained to this house,
although the jumbled logs and sticks of House 6 A
did not reveal any clearly decipherable pattern).
Thus there appeared to be three generations of

Excavation Detail

- 97 00

,t?^d Silt and till

Fig. 10. Profile of a portion of the south face of Trench 1 (grid in meters).

Structures, all of Pavik phase age, represented in
the western portion of Trench 1 .

We had hoped that the lengthy expanse of the
trench would lead to discovery of an undisturbed
deposit of the gray volcanic ash that in the 1970s
had been determined to separate materials of the
historic Pavik phase from those of the earlier
Brooks River Camp phase and thus to mark the
location of some significant quantity of the earlier
material. However, in most of the trench the ash
was nonexistent, evidently (as with all the houses
excavated) eradicated entirely by Pavik phase oc-
cupants of the site. But in the 4 m of Trench 1
east of E30, and coinciding with the easternmost
portion of the deepest part of the trench, discon-
tinuous traces of the ash were noted at the trench's
southern edge. The overall deposit in that area
appeared simply as midden, rather than as a house
cut or other aboriginal excavation, and because it
was relatively undisturbed beneath the remnant
ash, it was thought to promise the recovery of
some Camp phase materials (Fig. 10). Unfortu-
nately, the yield from that section was the lightest
from anywhere in the trench.

Potentially diagnostic artifacts from the trench
section E30 to E34 are listed in Table 1. Unfor-
tunately, the edge of the cut for the apparent house
entrance (Fig. 10) was not clearly identified in the
generally mixed fill until excavation of that 2-m
section of the trench (E30-E32) was nearly com-
plete. With few exceptions artifacts were recorded
only by level and 2-m section; it is therefore not
surprising if the sample from the section is mixed.
In the 2-m section to the east (E32-E34), however,
there was no such disturbance. The distribution
of artifacts there might at first be construed to
suggest the presence of at least a trace of a lower

component in that area. That is, the lower portions
of the section yielded no glass beads and a single
thick sherd of a type characteristic of the earlier
Brooks River Camp phase (Table 1). However,
the presence of four sawed slate pieces (generally
rare in materials of the Camp phase, a time when
slate was almost universally chipped to shape)
seems to indicate with equal strength that the en-
tire deposit was predominantly Pavik in age. In
any event, given the paltry scale of this uncertain
evidence and the small overall proportion of thick-
paste sherds from the entire excavation (46 of
930)— where many of the thick fragments may well
be from Pavik phase lamps rather than Brooks
River Camp phase pots— there seems no reason
to suppose that the Pavik collection overall is se-
riously contaminated by earlier materials.

House 1

The surface depression marking the location of
this house was visible enough that the collapsed
structure was confidently desodded in its entirety,
only to encounter frost a short distance below sod.
As thawing permitted work to resume, the abo-
riginal floor, with a fireplace in a shallow pit un-
lined by stones, was revealed 1 0 cm below modem
ground surface at the center of the depression.

Altogether, an area of about 35 m^ was opened,
from which some 1 2 m^ of fill was removed by
season's end. The house had evidently been con-
structed with horizontal logs outlining the base of
the walls, and on the northeastern side and along
the eastern side of the front and the eastern portion
of the rear the limits were defined with some ease

Part Three

Table 1 . Potentially time-sensitive artifacts from two sections of Trench 1 , Paugvik.

Artifact^

No.

Label

E32-E34

E30-E32

Upper

Lower

Upper

Lower

Total

Trade objects

21. bullet mold half

62. metal ulu

107. glass bead

133. nail

Stone artifacts

15. slate end blade, type 1

55. whetstone, type 1

56. whetstone, type 2 ~

60. stone saw

63. stone ulu blade

64. untyijed ulu fragment

77. misc. sawed slate pieces

78. misc. jKjlished stone

140. slate chips and chunks

Naknek ware potsherds

100. thin plain, variety unknown

101. thin plain, Pavik variety
105. thick plain, variety unknown

2
1
1
1
1
1
6
5
6

7
1

" Number and label refer to descriptions in Table 2.

by the telltale channel and adjacent cut in the
greenish glacial till. In much of this area where the
edges were so clearly defined it was also possible
to estimate the height of aboriginal ground surface
(Fig. 11). In sections of the western side and to-
ward the northwestern rear comer of the house,
however, the till surface dipped below the floor of
the house and the definition of floor limits was
less certain. A similar cut in the till was located
in parts of the right (southwestern) front comer,
but in other parts of the same comer the till had
been dug out by an earlier disturbance. As the
tunnel entrance of the house was cleared, it became
clear that the disturbed area extended to the tunnel
side. At first suspected to mark a side chamber,
excavation showed that the disturbance had pre-
dated the constmction of House 1 , for the buried
rock pile that was a major part of the disturbed
area, which penetrated about as deeply as the floor
of the entrance, had been cut cleanly by the House
1 tunnel edge. The disturbance was explored only
to the limits indicated in Figure 1 1 .

House 1 was the smallest and shallowest of the
four houses in which substantial excavations were
made, and it departed from all of the others in the
discemible outline of its base logs and in the ab-
sence of a barricade of stones around the centrally
located fire. The tunnel, too, was unusually stubby
and extended an uncharacteristically short dis-
tance into the house floor. Although deteriorated

posts and horizontal wood fragments were plen-
tiful, and although some of these and some shallow
depressions without traces of wood (Fig. 1 1) could
be imagined to be at strategic locations on the
floor, it was not possible to identify the locations
of major roof support posts with confidence. The
total area of the actual house floor was about 25
m\

House lA

Excavations in the eastern end of Trench 1 had
revealed a heavy deposit of ash on the south wall,
and toward the end of the season the trench was
expanded south by a 2 x 2-m cut designated in
the field as Trench 3. In a rather hasty excavation,
the expansion uncovered a large stone-lined hearth
that was almost certainly— to judge from the other
houses excavated— the central feature of a dwell-
ing, designated House 1 A (Fig. 1 1). The excava-
tion was carried somewhat below the level of the
supposed house floor, and its relation to the floor
of House 1 is shown in Figure 1 1 , section C-C.

When the House 1 A fireplace was first exposed
to confirm the existence of the house itself, it was
thought likely that the House 1 A entry tunnel was
the cause of the disturbed fill at the front of House
1. Although this possibility cannot be ruled out

Excavation Detail

modem sod
aboriginal surface

rock

wood

post

cliarcoai, wood ash

projected edge

pit or depression

2 meters

SECTION A - A

SECTION B - B 1/

SECTION C - C

Fig. 1 1. Plan and sections of House 1 and excavated portion of House lA.

24 Part Three

entirely, a careful examination of the modem sur-
face south of the House 1 A excavation revealed a
slight but abrupt depression, and the adjacent bluff
showed what seemed to be a section of truncated
entrance tunnel, suggesting rather that the en-
trance had opened more directly toward what is
now the river bluff (as projected in Fig. 9). This
orientation is more likely, as indicated by a surface
of uncut glacial till that rose some 1 0 cm above
the floor of House 1 at its western edge (Fig. 1 1 ,
sect. B-B, C-C). Because the till remnant rose even
higher above the level of the floor of House 1 A
and yet was within 75 cm of the House 1 A hearth,
its presence seems explicable only by the existence
of a low earthen bench in House 1 A immediately
behind (i.e., north or northeast of) its central fire,
a bench high enough to lie completely above the
till at that point.

Whatever its precise orientation. House 1 A must
have predated House 1 . First, the position of House
lA was almost impossible to discern by any sur-
face indication, whereas House 1 was clearly vis-
ible. Second, nothing in the fill of House 1 indi-
cated any overlying disturbance such as would be
caused by a later structure. Finally, if the distur-
bance at the front of House 1 was in any way
related to House 1 A, the excavation evidence was
clear that the House 1 entrance postdated it. In
any event, there were clearly two generations of
houses located at what we called House 1 .

House 2

The central, rock-lined hearth of House 2 was en-
countered in the initial test pit at a depth of about
30 cm. As thawing permitted the hearth area to
be exposed, the surrounding floor was found to be
fairly distinct but not cleanly overlying sterile till
as hoped. A transverse trench 40 cm wide was
then laid out along the north-south excavation
grid and excavated slowly into and through the
floor. What it revealed was that the hearth and the
center of the house covered earlier excavations of
considerable size. Comparable complexity was
found over much of the floor, little of which over-
lay the recognizable greenish glacial clay; indeed,
only a portion of the south wall and the southwest
comer were clearly defined where the position of
the major comer post was circled by a shallow cut
in a small bed of remnant till. The southeastern
comer had been entirely eradicated by the deep
house lying immediately to the south of House 2.

That house had been passed over in choosing the
excavation sample both because of its depth and
because of all the 1 0 house depressions visible on
the site it had suffered the most serious damage
through pot hunting.

The positions of the other walls of House 2 were
defined only with some difficulty; there was no
evidence remaining of any horizontal base logs,
but the two northern comers were marked by fairly
substantial post remnants. Efforts to positively lo-
cate the front wall included a fairly expansive but
shallow cut— the limits of which are shown in Fig-
ure 12— that produced a few timbers and rocks
that seemed at first to mark the existence of some
kind of storm shed at the outer end of the sunken
entrance, but when the cut was completed there
was no clear evidence of any such stmcture. Like
the other two houses with completely excavated
entries, the entrance tunnel of this one seemed to
open directly to the outside.

Whereas the transverse trench, which crossed
the house diagonally, provided evidence that the
southeastern comer had been eradicated by a later
structure, it also yielded evidence of some under-
lying structural remnants at the north, above which
the floor of House 2 was traced. The biggest sur-
prise came upon clearing the deep disturbance be-
neath the hearth, which the trench had also re-
vealed. This disturbance was the entrance of an
earlier house, the front part of the floor of which
was hopelessly confused with what had been taken
to be a slightly raised bench at the back of House
2. As the final result, it was not entirely clear
whether the piles of firecracked rock and the area
of charcoal and ash found on what was first thought
to be the back bench (Fig. 1 2) were, in fact, features
of House 2 or of the house underlying it.

House 2A

With clearance of the earlier entrance to a point
slightly west of the back wall of House 2, charcoal
and ash appeared that invited an extension west-
ward by an arbitrary cut to reveal the rock-filled
hearth of what is now designated House 2A, clearly
the major structure underlying House 2. No at-
tempt was made to carry the clearance beyond that
area shown in Figure 1 2. On the south, the original
cut for the House 2A floor had not eradicated the
till now remaining at the comer of House 2. Al-
though the actual northern and southern edges of
the House 2A floor were not identified, its width

Excavation Detail 25

secnoN D-D

FiG. 12. Plan and sectioiis of House 2 and excavated portions of House 2A.

appears to have been some^iiliat less than that of
the later House 2. The separation of arti£u:ts per-
taining to Houses 2 and 2A is provisional only.

Altogether, some 55 m* was opened to uncover
the total House 2 complex, in which the lai^ge House
2 itself was well over 30 m^ in floor area. In this
complex, three generations of houses are indicat-
ed: House 2A, overlain by House 2, which then
had one firont comer obliterated by construction
of the (unnumbered) house immediately south of

it In addition, the structure thought to lie beneath
the floor within a cut in the till on the north side
(Fig. 12), which for lack of time was not cleared
when it was concluded to be unassociated with the
floor of House 2, could have been contemporary
with House 2A. When it became clear that the
base of the joint feature of Houses 2 and 2A was
reached and glacial till appeared in patchwork
&shion around the floor, work was ended without
attempting to clear all underlying pockets of mid-

26 Part Three

den and other disturbed material below the house
and without carrying the excavation everywhere
to sterile ground.

House 3

Although more deeply buried than House 1 , House
3 was not so deeply covered as House 2 and upon
testing promised a substantial floor under only
some 20 cm of fill at the stone-lined fireplace.
Unfortunately, as in House 2 there were no rec-
ognizable base logs. About 40 m^ was finally
opened, from which at least 1 5 m' of material was
removed, although this amount was insufficient to
expose the entire floor.

Complexity arose with the discovery that the
edge of House 2 had either coincided with or very
slightly overlapped that of House 3 (of which the
limit shown in Fig. 1 3 is the best approximation).
From the relatively greater clarity of the side of
House 2, which we actually excavated concur-
rently with House 3, it was evident that House 2
was built later.

Furthermore, near the conjunction of houses,
the underlying log structure that had been found
within the northern edge of House 2 (Fig. 1 2) ex-
tended beneath the floor of House 3. There, at the
northern end of the set of short parallel logs (Fig.
1 3), the pile of fire-cracked rocks continued down
below those logs; both logs and rocks were located
within a cut in the till. This structural arrangement
was thought immediately to be remains of a sunk-
en house entrance, but because the floors of both
Houses 2 and 3 completely overlay it and because
of the persistence of frost in the hole and the rapid
passage of the excavation season, this structural
arrangement was never explored to its base. What-
ever it was, it probably was not a passageway con-
necting Houses 2 and 3.

In addition, the northernmost comer of House
3 had been eradicated by a still later house or other
structure lying north of it but so faintly indicated
on the modem surface as to have been missed
completely upon earlier examination. This area is
now labeled simply "disturbance" (Fig. 1 3). The
northern edge of House 3 was perforce left unex-
cavated as the season drew to a close, and the floor
was found to extend farther in that direction than
anticipated and into frozen ground under a very
large pile of backdirt.

Although, with the exceptions noted, the floor
was clearly defined, there was nothing to con-

vincingly mark the location of aboriginal ground
surface, although it is presumed to have lain no
more than 1 0 cm below the top of modem sod
and only a few centimeters below the telltale streak
of Katmai volcanic ash. Apparently the house was
in most places excavated between 40 and 70 cm
into the contemporary surface of the ground. As
is often the case, the entranceway, thoroughly fro-
zen before it began to be uncovered, yielded a
substantial portion of the organic artifacts recov-
ered from the house.

Added to evidence from House 2, the excava-
tion of House 3 suggested that not three but four
generations of stmctures could be traced at Paug-
vik: ( 1 ) the entry or other stmcture underlying both
Houses 2 and 3, (2) House 3, (3) House 2, and (4)
the unnumbered house south of House 2. House
2A was a feature of either the first or second of
these stages, whereas the northern comer "distur-
bance" of House 3 was a feature of either the third
or fourth stage.

House 4

As the end of the excavation season approached
it was clear that time remaining was not sufficient
to allow complete clearance of any of the houses
that showed clearly on the surface of the remaining
eastem end of the site. Two were selected for lim-
ited tests.

The surface depression designated House 4 was
about 5 X 5 m, with an evident entrance channel
pointing toward the bluff" above the river (Fig. 9).
A 2-m-square cut was made in the center of the
visible depression, but although the floor was ev-
ident within 20 cm of surface, no hearth appeared;
rather, as the floor stain was traced through ex-
pansion of the pit southeastward, a substantial
hearth appeared in what would have been the ex-
treme southeastem comer of the house if the sur-
face depression were taken as an accurate indi-
cation of the actual house location (which it was
concluded not to be). The apparently elliptical rock-
ringed hearth, only one side of which was exposed,
was 90 cm north-south, thus apparently virtually
identical in size and shape to those of all the other
houses except House 1. In all, 9.5 m^ was cleared
to the relatively shallow floor of the house, below
which appeared no indication of earlier occupa-
tion fill. The conclusion, therefore, was that later
disturbances had modified the visible surface de-
pression of a house originally constructed over

Excavation Detail 27

...... ,. -\B

••■'' «»"^ ■** "'" ^"^ "<«»" around/

SECTION A - A

SECTION D-D

2 meters

modern sod
^ ^^3 rock
wood
© post
..rt^j^jg^ charcoal
-- projected

(J"; pit

O post hole

Fig. 1 3. Plan and sections of House 3.

28 Part Three

undisturbed ground, to give an erroneous picture
of the house's true orientation: what seemed to be
backdirt from the excavation of the next house to
the east, designated House 5, overlay much of the
House 4 hearth.

House 5

Unhke House 4, here a 3 x 3-m excavation re-
vealed the substantial rock-lined hearth, about 1 .0
X 0.7 m in plan size, with its long depression
north-south, to be in the center of the visible sur-
face depression. Like House 4, the relatively shal-
low overburden, the modest overall size (about 5
X 5 m), and the lack of evidence of any structure
beneath the hearth and center of the floor indicated
that we would have done well to begin the season
by excavating these outliers, which might have
provided a simpler introduction to the archae-
ology of the Paugvik houses than did the habita-
tions we actually chose to begin with. The most
unusual find from House 5 was the single gun part
recovered from the Paugvik site.

Together, Houses 4 and 5 appeared to represent
two generations of structures in the eastern edge
of the remnant Paugvik site.

House 6, Area 6A

The eastern end of the continuous portion of the
1973 trench was suspected of having penetrated a
habitation of some kind, although there was no
sign of a house on the existing surface. It was partly
the hope of exploring this possibility further that
dictated the placement of Trench 1 of 1985 next
to the eastern end of the 1973 cut. The lower por-
tions of Trench 1 were uniformly frozen, but when
the base of occupation material was finally reached
at its western end, the suspicion of 1973 was con-
firmed by the presence of the substantial rock-
lined hearth that, on the basis of evidence from
other houses being uncovered, was supposed to
mark the approximate center of a semisubterra-
nean structure (Fig. 14). Accordingly, a 3 x 6-m
cut was laid out north of Trench 1 to open more
of the presumed house, although the degree of frost
encountered at the base of Trench 1 made it clear
that excavation of the new section would not be
speedy. This northern cut was designated Trench
2 in the field, but for present purposes the house

revealed by Trench 2 and the western 5 m of Trench
1 is designated House 6, which is described here
as a unit.

The eastern edge of the house was discernible
in the wall profiles of both northern and southern
edges of the cut (Fig. 14, profiles NIO, N13), and
the limit of the floor within the trenches was
thought to be located accurately, although a jum-
ble of preserved logs and sticks, probably collapsed
from a wall or roof, tended to obscure portions of
the actual floor edge. For present purposes the
section judged to be outside of the house within
Trench 2 and the western 5 m of Trench 1 is des-
ignated Area 6 A, probably but not certainly a hab-
itation; the lower 20 cm in the appropriate areas
is taken to be floor deposit of House 6 and Area
6 A. As suggested by the number of organic items,
preservation of the House 6 and Area 6A floors
and of the excavated portion of the House 6 en-
trance tunnel was excellent, yielding grass cordage,
much of the hair collected from the site, and wood-
en artifacts, including mask parts and five clear
examples of flat wooden pelt stretchers.

In Area 6A, evidently predating House 6, there
were three fairly well-defined pits, on an apparent
(house?) floor at the approximate level of the floor
of House 6, the easternmost of which (Fig. 14)
yielded a number of flat sections of worked wood
that at first were thought to be remnants of skin
stretchers such as were found on the floor of House
6 itself, although examination in the laboratory
cast doubt on this initial interpretation. The sec-
ond pit yielded major fragments of twined netting,
thought to be a fishbag, and the third produced an
evident cache of leafstalks of the spreading wood
fern {Dryopteris expansa (Presl) Fraser-Jenkins &.
Jermy), a native foodstuff'of the region. It is likely,
although not clearly demonstrable from the 1985
evidence, that this section of floor represented the
still earlier house betrayed by the westernmost ab-
original cut indicated in Figure 10, which was part-
ly destroyed in the construction of House 6. Thus,
despite the nicely frozen condition of House 6, its
invisibility from the modem surface, and the ab-
sence of occupation debris immediately beneath
it, that house was almost certainly not the earliest
habitation in its part of the site but was rather at
least a second- and probably a third-generation
structure in that vicinity, to judge by profiles of
Trench I (Figs. 10, 14).

Unfortunately, the slowness of thaw in the deep
overburden, which totaled about 1 m, ruled out
further extensive expansions of excavations in
House 6 in the time available. But in the last days

Excavation Detail

E20

E22

E24

E26

modem sod

<^ (^3 rock

c2iI^S3) wood

® post '«»- ^__,^^

«v^«Sjp»^ charcoal P ~— ^ ^®j___2;0rganic

projected

( ~' pit

N13 —

N11 —

N10 —

— 96.00

L^^Lj

layers
PROFILE AT N13

fish bag

0(t\

® V^^organic layers^

96.00

PROFILE AT N10

Fig. 14. Plan and profiles of excavated portion of House 6 (grid in meters).

of the season a 1 x 1.5-m southward extension at
the west end of Trench 1 permitted the complete
exposure of the House 6 hearth. For purposes of
artifact provenience both the eastern 2 m of the
continuous section of the 1973 trench (sect. 9) and
the first detached segment of the trench to the east
(sect. 1 1) were counted as portions of House 6.

Trench 4

As excavations of Houses 2 and 3 progressed, it
was speculated that the relatively flat area near
their entrances might produce an informative
sample of midden material associated with one or
both houses. Accordingly, a 2 x 6-m trench was

Part Three

laid out at that place, oriented north-south on the
site grid, and was desodded to permit thawing. As
the season wore on, however, it became clear that
not all excavations projected could be completed,
and so the area finally excavated was reduced to
1 X 6 m (Fig. 9). Work came to a hurried close
as at least some glacial till showed throughout the
length of the trench at depths of 1.0-1.4 m below
the modem surface. Materials recovered did ap-
pear to represent the midden expected; the matrix
was jumbled and without definable strata. The sec-
tion of the trench almost immediately in front of
the entrance to House 3, in particular, yielded
plentiful bone remains that appeared to represent
largely animals of fur-bearing species that were
mostly articulated at the time of deposition, pre-
sumably skinned carcasses thrown out in front of
the house.

With cessation of excavation of Trench 4, the
summer's work was brought to an end. All units
were backfilled.

Stratification of Cultural Features

All major units of excavation revealed evidence
of a sequence of construction at the Paugvik site
and within the relatively brief temporal limits of
the historic Pavik phase. There are indications of
two generations of house structures both at House
1 and at combined Houses 4 and 5, of apparently
three generations of construction in combined
Trench 1 and House 6, and of at least three and
probably four generations of structures represent-
ed at combined Houses 3 and 4.

Excavation Detail 3 1

Collections

In the following discussion, artifacts from the
Paugvik site excavated in 1961, 1973, and 1985
are described under three headings: procurement
network, maintenance network, and protective
network. Within these three broad categories, fur-
ther subdivision was made on the basis of the
activity for which the artifacts were intended. Al-
though no exhaustive comparative treatment is
attempted, some comparative data derived from
Nelson (1983) and from published and unpub-
lished reports dealing with sites closest to Paugvik,
both spatially and temporally, are included with
the descriptions when relevant. Numbers in pa-
rentheses refer to numbered items in Table 2.

Procurement Network

Hunting

Recovered objects associated with sea and land
hunting reflect the diversity but not the complexity
of early historic Eskimo weaponry. The toggle har-
poon head ( 1 ) is represented by a single antler spec-
imen, an antler spur fragment, and an ivory frag-
ment. The complete head has a blade slit parallel
to the round line hole, a closed socket (which is
broken) and a single spur. Incised lines on the spur
below the line hole depict a human face when the
head is held upside down. A single incised line
extends along one side to the tip of the blade slit
(Figs. 1 5, 44h; Dumond, 198 1 , PI. XVII, Ab). Small
harpoon heads like this one were probably used
with a light sealing harpoon thrown with the aid
of a throwing board. A similar head was recovered
from the Old Togiak site on Togiak Bay (Kowta,
1963, pp. 68, 71, PI. 5c). The spur fragment in-
cludes the lower half of a grooved line hole from

which a straight incised line extends to near the
end of the basal spur. The ivory fragment includes
one side of the blade slit.

There are eight harpoon dart heads of antler in
the collection, seven of which are complete or
nearly so. Six of the complete heads and the in-
complete specimen, here designated type 1 (2), are
identified as having been used with a light sealing
harpoon (Nelson, 1983, Pis. XIV, LV 1-5). They
are symmetrically or asymmetrically barbed bi-
laterally, with a centrally located, triangular line
hole. The complete heads have sharp or sloping
shoulders and plain conical tangs (Figs. 1 6h, 44i-
k; Dumond, 1981, PI. XVII, Ah-k). Similar har-
poon dart heads have been recovered from a num-
ber of late prehistoric and historic sites in south-
western Alaska, including Hooper Bay village in
the Yukon delta (Oswalt, 1952a, p. 49, PI. 1, 2-
5), Old Togiak (Kowta, 1963, pp. 78-79, PI. 7),
and House 15 at Chagvan Bay (Staley, 1990, p.
239, Fig. 50e,f), and from earlier excavations at
the Paugvik site (Larsen, 1950, Fig. 55 A, 2). The
eighth dart head, designated type 2 (3), is heavier
and may have been used for taking salmon; barbs
are on one side only, and the round line hole is
off"-center; the shoulders slope to a wedge-shaped
tang (Fig. 1 6f). This style of harpoon dart head
has been previously reported from Old Togiak
(Kowta, 1963, pp. 132-136, PI. 19), Platinum
South Spit on Goodnews Bay (Larsen, 1950, Fig.
55B, 3), the Tikchik site on the Nushagak River
(VanStone, 1968, p. 58, PI. 8, 5-9, 12), and late
prehistoric sites of the upper Naknek River drain-
age (Dumond, 1981, PI. XVII, Ad-j).

The collection contains two harpoon foreshafts
(4), one of antler and the other of ivory. The antler
specimen is broken at the proximal end but prob-
ably had a wedge-shaped base. There is a centrally

Collections 33

Table 2. Distribution of artifacts and detritus from Paugvik."

H2A

Description

A B HIA A B A B

Procurement network
Hunting

1 . toggle harpoon head

2. harpoon dart head, type 1

3. harpoon head, type 2

4. harpoon foreshaft

5. harpoon socket piece

6. float mouthpiece

7. bladder float plug

8. harpoon ice pick

9. wound plug

10. lance blade sheath

1 1 . bow fragment

12. arrowhead

13. blunt arrowhead

14. metal end blade

15. slate end blade, type 1

16. slate end blade, type 2

17. slate end blade, unclassified

18. chipped proj. point

19. arrow shaft

20. gun side plate

21. bullet mold half

22. boat or meat hook

Fishing

23. lurehook

24. lurehook shank

25. barbless antler point

26. leister prong

27. fish spear point

28. net weight

29. net float

30. net mesh gauge

3 1 . fish scaler

Trapping

32. pelt stretcher
Transportation

33. kayak deck beam

34. kayak keel protector

35. umiak rib or riser

36. sled stanchion

37. sled upright

38. sled runner

39. sled shoe

40. snowshoe crosspiece

Maintenance network
Tools and manufacturing

4 1 . antler splitting wedge

42. steel wedge

43. wooden maul

44. metal axe head

45. stone adze blade

46. stone skin scraper blade

47. skin scraper blade blank

48. crooked knife handle

49. crooked knife blade

1 2

Part Four

Table 2. Extended.

H6A

T4 73T 61T

Total

14
3

1
1

1
5
8

13
1

20
3
1
1

1
1
1
1
1
1
30
I

30
8
1
2
2
1
1
1

Collections 35

Table 2. Continued.

H2A

Description

HIA

50. composite knife handle

5 1 . end-bladed knife blade

52. rodent incisor knife

53. engraving tool

54. metal knife or engraver

55. whetstone, type 1

56. whetstone, type 2

57. whetstone, type 3

58. whetstone, type 4

59. whetstone, type 5

60. stone saw

6 1 . metal bladed ulu

62. metal ulu blade

63. stone ulu blade

64. untyped ulu fragment

65. ulu handle

66. metal scissors

67. awl

68. stone scraper or knife

69. bottle glass scraper

70. pick or mattock blade

7 1 . shovel blade

72. rake prong

73. ice pick or chisel

74. snow beater

75. unidentified metal object

76. sawed slate blanks

77. misc. sawed slate pieces

78. misc. polished stone

79. chipped bifaces

80. ochre anvil

81. hammerstone

Household equipment

82. compound vessel

83. vessel side fragment

84. vessel bottom fragment (2 types)

85. spoon

86. ladle

87. dipper

88. water bag nozzle

89. nozzle or float part

90. large bag fragment

9 1 . mat or bag fragment

92. grass cordage

93. birch bark basket

94. metal kettle parts

95. brass box

96. pottery lamp

97. stone lamp

98. bottle glass

99. chinaware fragments

Naknek ware potsherds

1 00. thin plain, variety unknown

101. thin plain, Pavik var.

102. thin plain. Camp var.

103. thin plain, Brooks R. var.

104. thin plain, exterior ridged

105. thick plain, variety unknown

106. thick plain. Camp var.

146

Part Four

Table 2. Extended. Continued.

H6A

73T

61T

A B

Total

3
2

1
2
2 /

4
3

8
8
3
1
1
3

3
1
3

1
I
5

3
1

4
2
1
1
2
1
3
3

2 1

9 - 2

1 1

1
1

1
2

10
2

1
1
4

1
8

2 1

1 1

5
2

4
1

2
2

, 4'^
6

. 6 3

135 147

30 4

127

305

1163

29 28

49
6

40
8

250

1 6

2 1

Collections 37

Table 2. Continued.

H2A

Description

B HIA

Personal adornment
107. glass bead

108.
109.
110.
111.
112.

native bead
ring

bracelet

necklace segment
hair comb

Smoking equipment

113. snuffbox (?)

1 14. birch fungus

Toy

115. bow
Ceremonial objects

1 1 6. mask, unfinished

1 1 7. mask appendage

118. figurine

Miscellaneous

1 1 9. sweatbath respirator

Protective network
Clothing

1 20. mukluk sole fragment

121. skin garment fragment

122. skin patch

123. gut raincoat (?) fragment

124. button

125. shoe fragment

1 26. sewn skin fragment

1 27. cut skin fragment

128. uncut skin fragment

1 29. knotted sealskin line

1 30. knotted baleen

131. wool cloth fragment

Imported building material

1 32. window glass fragment

133. nail

134. screw

135. mica fragment

136. brick fragment

Unidentified objects
Wood

137. stake

138. unidentified

Antler, ivory, bone

139. unidentified
Debris

1 40. slate chips and chunks

141. chert, quartzite chips

142. pumice pieces

143. bone fragments

144. ivory fragments

145. antler fragments

146. iron fragments

55 12

1
1

1 -.

9
I

2
4

1
1

Part Four

Table 2. Extended. Continued.

H6A

T4 73T 61T Total

193

281

909
1

2/
1
1
1

12
S
4

3
2
1
5

1 c

AS
2

1
1

8
9

107

1 1 4 3 27

2 2 1 18

4 3 29 11 101

6 5 8 10 70

Collections

Table 2. Continued.

Description

H2A

HIA

147. brass, copper fragments

148. cut baleen

149. mammoth tusk, tooth

Hair (no. samples)

1 50. Canis (dog, wolf, fox)

151. Cos/or (beaver)

1 52. Homo sapiens

153. <9rt^a/ra (muskrat)

1 54. Phoca (harbor seal)

155. Rangifer (caribou)

1 56. Urst4s (bear)

" H = house; T = trench. 73 = trench dug in 1973; 61 = trench dug in 1961.
Level A includes everything above the basal floor; level B is the lowest floor deposit.

located, elongated line slot with incised lines ex-
tending from each end; the specimen is round in
cross section at the distal end (Fig. 1 6i). The ivory
foreshaft, much larger and heavier, has an asym-
metrical tang and an oval line hole from which
extends a pronounced line groove on each side
(Fig. 44m; Dumond, 1981, PI. XVII, Al).

Seventeen objects are identified as harpoon
socketpieces (5), only six of which are complete or
nearly so. Four are similar in form, being drilled

Fig. 15. Toggle harpoon head (point is downward).

at the distal end to receive the dart head and hav-
ing sharp shoulders and plain conical tangs (Fig.
1 6a, c, d); on one specimen the tang is asymmet-
rical (Fig. 16c). Three are made of ivory, and one,
which is not drilled at the distal end, is made of
walrus penis bone. One of the ivory socketpieces
has a projecting piece in the center of the drilled
hole that presumably served to wedge the tang of
the dart head in place (Fig. 16d). An ivory sock-
etpiece is blunt and heavy with sharp shoulders
and a rectangular tang (Fig. 44a; Dumond, 1981,
PI. XVII, Bj); a badly weathered specimen of wal-
rus penis bone has sloping shoulders and a plain,
conical tang (Fig. 44d; Dumond, 1981, PI. XVII,
Bi). These socketpieces would appear to have been
used with a thrusting harpoon having a float of
seal intestine similar to a "sea otter harpoon" col-
lected in Bristol Bay in 1 88 1-1 883 by C. L. McKay
(described and illustrated by Mason, 1902, p. 293,
PI. 1 2). A similar socketpiece from House 1 5 at
Chagvan Bay was described and illustrated by
Staley (1990, pp. 245-246, Fig. 52b).

A single unfinished harpoon socketpiece is made
of ivory and has a long bifurcated tang. It is rough-
ly worked and not drilled at the distal end (Fig.
16e). Another incomplete specimen of antler ap-
parently had a wedge-shaped tang (Fig. 1 6b). Four
ivory socketpieces are so badly weathered that their
form when complete cannot be determined with
certainty. One of these contains, in the drilled end,
a wooden plug that permitted a more secure seat-
ing of the dart head. Two socketpiece tang frag-
ments, one of bone and the other of ivory, have
sharp shoulders and are asymmetrical with pro-
nounced knobs near the tip (Fig. 44e; Dumond,
1981,P1. XVII, Dc).

40 Part Four

Table 2. Extended. Continued.

H6A

A B H4 H5

73T 61T

Total

3 y

5 4

4 1

8 1

12^

2
2

1
10

The remaining three socketpiece fragments, one
of ivory and two of bone, were apparently used
with much Ughter implements, possibly feathered
harpoons thrown from a kayak with the aid of a
throwing board (Nelson, 1983, PI. LIV). These are
basal fragments with wedge-shaped tangs; one has
a slight projection near the tip (Fig. 16k,l). Sock-
etpieces similar to all the forms from Paugvik were
recovered from the Old Togiak site and were de-
scribed and illustrated by Kowta (1963, pp. 73-
78, PI. 6).

The collection contains two ivory float mouth-
pieces (6), one of which is incomplete. The com-
plete specimen has an enlarged lip and a projecting
spur with a drilled hole at the proximal end (Fig.
1 6g). The incomplete mouthpiece is for a smaller
float of the type that is attached to the shaft of a
harpoon (Fig. 16j). There is a projection at the
proximal end that is pierced for the attachment of
a line to bind the mouthpiece to the harpoon shaft
(Nelson, 1983, p. 142, PI. XVI top, 17, 21, 25). A
similar mouthpiece was recovered at Paugvik by
Larsen (1950, Fig. 55 A, 9).

A very small, round ivory object 0.8 cm in di-
ameter and deeply grooved for lashing may be a
bladder float plug (7).

A probable harpoon ice pick (8) of antler tapers
to a point at the distal end and has a drilled line
hole approximately in the center (Fig. 1 6m). This
implement may have been simply hafted to a shaft
and used as a fishing ice pick. Two additional ob-
jects are pointed at one end and may also be ice
picks. One of ivory has a deep groove along one
side (Fig. 44g; Dumond, 1981, PI. XVII, Cd), while
the other of antler is thinned at the proximal end
(Fig. 44f; Dumond, 1981, PI. XVII, An).

A wooden object, rounded at one end and
notched on either side, tapers toward the opposite
end (Fig. 16s). It may be a wound plug (9) used to
stop the flow of blood from a carcass.

The collection contains two wooden lance blade
sheaths (10), convex on the outer surface and hol-
lowed out on the inside, for the protection of stone
or metal blades. There are lashing notches at the
point of maximum width (Fig. 1 6n). A similar
sheath was described and illustrated by Nelson
(1983, p. 146, PI. LVIIa, 27). Three comparable
two-piece sheaths are included in an undated cache
of hunting weapons (never published) that was
accidentally encountered by a USGS geologist near
the shore of Lake Grosvenor in the upper Naknek
River drainage system in 1964. (.As of 1985, the
sheaths, four associated shaft fragments, and eight
polished lance heads were held by the National
Park Service in Anchorage.)

Two spruce bow fi-agments (11) are ovoid in
cross section with nocks that are simple rounded
projections with sloping shoulders. The smaller
fragment may represent a toy (Figs. 1 6r, 44c; Du-
mond, 1981,P1. XVII, Cc).

Arrowheads (12) for large game or war are rep-
resented in the collection by 10 specimens, only
two of which are complete; all are made of antler.
One complete arrowhead has a pair of barbs on
one side, a sharp shoulder, and a conical tang; there
is no blade slit. An incised line along one side may
be an ownership mark (Fig. 1 6p). The other com-
plete arrowhead is short with paired barbs at the
slightly broken tip, sharp shoulders, and a plain
conical tang (Fig. 441; Dumond, 1981, PI. XVII,
Be). Two specimens, apparently unfinished, have
sharp shoulders and plain conical tangs but no

Collections

barbs (Fig. 16o,q). On one there is a series of par-
allel incised lines, possibly ownership marks (Fig.
1 60). Of the remaining six fragments, three are
tips (two with blade slots and one with a pair of
barbs along one side), two are center sections
showing a single barb, and one is a basal fragment,
rectangular in cross section, with a conical tang
(Fig. 16t).

Two blunt arrowheads (13) of wood for use as
bird arrows are roughly the shape of an elongated
diamond. From a sharp tang, broken on both spec-
imens, they swell to a point approximately one
third of the distance from the tip and then taper
to a point at the distal end (Fig. 1 6u, v).

The collection contains seven metal end blades
(14), two of brass and five of steel. The brass end
blades are very thin and flat across the base (Fig.
17d; Dumond, 1981, PI. XVII, Db). Three steel
blades are similar in shape but heavier (Fig. 1 7c;
Dumond, 1981, PI. XVII, Dh), and the other two
are long and narrow with short tangs (Fig. 17b;
Dumond, 1981, PI. XVII, Dg). Because toggle har-
poon heads are nearly absent from the Paugvik
collection, it is assumed that these blades were
used primarily with arrowheads.

There are 1 29 whole and fragmentary slate end
blades (15-17), presumably for the same purpose
as the somewhat rarer metal end blades. These
Paugvik insert blades are divided into two types,
of which the first is by far the more common. Type
1(15) has a faceted butt, always more than 20 mm
in length, that extends a variable distance over
each face of the blade and was almost invariably
formed by rubbing a narrow whetstone lengthwise
to the blade, often grooving it deeply. Relatively
whole examples among the 81 blades identified
vary from 40 to nearly 90 mm in length and are
1 7-30 mm in maximum width (Fig. 46g-l). Type
2 (16) is similar in overall form and size, but the
butt facet has been carved out with abrupt edges
(Fig. 46m,n). Those remaining unclassified (17)
are too fragmentary for recognition or are variant,
most of the latter being very thin and lacking facets
but of shapes variable enough that they form no
coherent type; a few are thick and may have been
in process of manufacture. Those that retain signs
of their mode of manufacture were formed largely
by abrasive sawing, snapping, and subsequent
grinding, although some chipping before grinding
is also in evidence (Fig. 46e,f).

Butt-faceted slate insert tips similar to type 1
blades are found in many sites in northern Alaska
(e.g., Ford, 1959) and are especially common in
late prehistoric and historic sites around the south-

em Bering Sea. They appear in the upper Naknek
drainage sequence after a.d. 1000 and become the
dominant projectile arming device after a.d. 1400
in the Brooks River Blufls phase (Dumond, 1981),
at about which time they also appear on Kodiak
Island (Jordan & Knecht, 1988; Dumond, 1991).
Inserts of type 2 appeared in the Naknek region
only with the beginning of the historic period (i.e.,
after about a.d. 1 800), with a geographical distri-
bution much more limited than that of type 1,
although they have been reported from some of
the latest sites on Kodiak Island (e.g., Clark, 1974,
PI. 16P). Larsen (1950) suggested that such im-
plements with deeply carved facets that he recov-
ered from Paugvik in 1 948 were derived from cast
brass prototypes, but there is no evidence for this.

The single chipped projectile point (18) is rem-
iniscent of artifacts from the Naknek region of the
early first millennium a.d. (i.e., of the Smelt Creek
phase [Dumond, 1981]), although with a length of
56 mm and a width of 24 mm it is somewhat more
elongated than is common in that phase. Although
it might be compared with the form of some
chipped points of later periods from northern
Alaska (e.g.. Ford, 1959, Fig. 64), the presence of
only the one example— from House 1 , from which
a few other finds are reminiscent of Naknek River
drainage implements of the first millennium— sug-
gests rather that it is somehow derived from some
earlier deposit (Fig. 46a).

Arrow shafts (19) are represented by three frag-
mentary specimens. The first is incomplete at both
ends and has a diameter of 9 mm. The second
includes the nock and, as is usual with the prox-
imal ends of arrows, is flattened and oval in cross
section (Fig. 1 7e). The third arrow shaft fragment
is complete at the distal end, where there is a deep
notch 3.5 cm long and pointed at the lower end
to receive the tang of the arrowhead (Fig. 1 7k).

A cast bronze gun side plate (20), slightly curved
at one end, has holes at both ends to receive the
screws that hold the lock to the gun stock. Initials
stamped on the back are either "HD" or "HU"
(Fig. 1 7g). This side plate probably was part of the
lock mechanism of a shotgun.

The collection contains one bullet mold half (21)
made from medium-grain sandstone, rectangular
in shape with a prepared flat surface into which
has been ground a circular depression 0.8 cm in
diameter. At one end of the depression is a groove
that, when the identical other half of the mold was
tied or otherwise affixed to this one, would permit
the lead to be poured in (Fig. 1 7j). This stone mold
may have fitted into a wood or antler handle re-

Part Four

sembling those in ethnographic collections (e.g.,
Fitzhugh & Kaplan, 1982, p. 167; Nelson, 1983,
PI. LXIII, 8). In southwestern Alaska similar molds
have been recovered from archaeological sites at
Crow Village on the Kuskokwim River (Oswalt &
VanStone, 1967, p. 31, PI. 2, n), Akulivikchuk on
the Nushagak River (VanStone, 1970, p. 62, PI.
11,2), and the Nunakakhnak site on Kodiak Island
(Knecht & Jordan, 1985, p. 29, Fig. 1 1).

The point for a boat or meat hook (22) is made
of ivory and has two oval lashing slots parallel to
the flat surface that would lie along the shaft (Fig.
1 7a). This hook is smaller than most of the boat
hooks illustrated by Nelson (1983, pi. LXVIII, 22-
25, LXXX, 1-5) and may have been used for drag-
ging large pieces of meat.

Fishing

Fishing was presumably as important to the Paug-
vik natives as it was to most coastal peoples south
of Bering Strait, where there are great salmon runs.
There is evidence in the collection to indicate the
use of the three-pronged fish spear and leister
pronged spear and probable use of the salmon har-
poon, nets, and hook and line.

The collection contains a single fish-shaped lure-
hook (23) and five lurehook shanks (24). The com-
plete specimen is small and was presumably used
for taking small fish such as tomcod or sculpin.
The fish-shaped shank of ivory flattens at the prox-
imal end, where there is an oval line hole cut at
right angles to the small nail at the distal end that
serves as a barb (Fig. 1 7i).

Five objects, four of ivory and one of antler, are
identified as lurehook shanks; all are unfinished,
are considerably larger than the complete lure-
hook, and hence were probably intended for taking
larger fish such as grayling or trout. One ivory
specimen is drilled at the distal end for a barb (Fig.
1 7h) and another is drilled near the proximal end
for the leader or line (Fig. 1 7f). Two ivory shanks
are flattened at the proximal end, and the single
antler shank is narrower and flatter than the others.
Similar lurehooks collected throughout south-
western Alaska were described and illustrated by
Nelson (1983, pp. 175, Pis. LXVIII, LXIX, Fig.
48). Surprisingly, fish-shaped lurehooks are absent
from the archaeological collection from the Old
Togiak site (Kowta, 1963, p. 104).

The collection contains eight slender, barbless
pointed objects of antler (25), which are round in

cross section. Three are identified as probable cen-
ter prongs for the three-pronged fish spear. Al-
though no matching side prongs were recovered,
this type of implement was widespread throughout
southwestern Alaska in the late prehistoric and
historic periods. All but two of the pointed objects
are complete and shoulderless, sloping to a pointed
proximal end (Fig. 1 7m-o). Similar barbless points
have been recovered at Hooper Bay village (Os-
walt, 1952a, pp. 54-55, PI. 2, items 9, 10) and Old
Togiak (Kowta, 1963, pp. 114-121, Pis. 12-14).

The 1 3 items identified here as leister prongs
(26), five of which are complete, are made of ant-
ler; some may in fact have been bird spear side
prongs (see Nelson, 1983, Figs. 42, 44, PI. LIX).
Two of the complete prongs and one nearly com-
plete example were found together and thus may
represent pieces of a single leister; each has nine
barbs (Fig. 1 71). The other complete prongs have
eight, six, and four barbs, respectively. Similar
weapon points were illustrated by Nelson (1983,
Pis. LX, 1, LXVII, 2, LXVIII, 1, Fig. 44), and
unilaterally multibarbed prongs were recovered at
Hooper Bay village (Oswalt, 1952a, pp. 54-55, PI.
2, 1 1-13) and the Old Togiak site (Kowta, 1963,
pp. 1 23-1 26, PI. 1 5) and from House 1 5 at Chagvan
Bay (Staley, 1990, pp. 249-250, Fig. 50a-c).

A piece of low-grade steel, perhaps a spike orig-
inally, was flattened and pounded out at one end
to form a barb. It is identified as difish spear point
(27). Because the distal end is bent slightly, it may
have been intended for use with a three-pronged
fish spear (Fig. 1 7p). Similar steel points were re-
covered from the Nushagak site (VanStone, 1972,
p. 55, PI. 11, items 2, 6).

The use of nets at Paugvik is indicated by 20
recovered net weights (28), 12 of bone, seven of
antler, and one of mammoth ivory. Six of the bone
weights are made from the curved, unsplit ribs of
large mammals, probably beluga, cut to length and
drilled at each end for suspension. The holes were
placed vertically, or what would be edge-to-edge
of the unmodified rib, and the surface is essentially
unmodified except for flattening at the ends (Fig.
18i). Two of the weights are smaller, possibly
formed of caribou ribs, and are worked on all sur-
faces. In one case the suspension holes were drilled
laterally, or flat-side to flat-side (Fig. 1 7t), and on
the other vertically. Three bone weights are made
from split sections of the material worked to a
rectangular shape and with laterally drilled sus-
pension holes (Fig. 18h). The 12th bone specimen
is different, having been worked to a flattened sur-
face at one end where there is a single suspension

Collections 43

hole (Fig. 17q). This last weight may have been
used with hook and Une.

Of the seven antler net weights, six of which are
complete, all except one are made of split seg-
ments. The exception is an unmodified section of
antler tine drilled vertically at each end. The other
three are roughly rectangular in cross section with
laterally drilled suspension holes (Fig. 18b). The
net weight of mammoth ivory is a piece of the
exfoliated outer surface of a tusk, roughly rect-
angular in shape with suspension holes drilled lat-
erally (Fig. 1 8d). Net weights similar to those from
Paugvik have been reported from all coastal and
riverine sites in southwestern Alaska.

Two incomplete net floats (29) are made of Cot-
tonwood bark, roughly rectangular in outline, with
a rectangular gouged line hole for attachment to
the net. In cross section these fragments have a
rounded triangular form, thinner at the top and
thick at the bottom (Fig. 1 7u). A piece of wood
that may be another incomplete net float is ap-
proximately 1 7 cm long and 6 cm wide and rough-
ly rectangular in shape; there are no suspension
holes. Bark net floats have been recovered from
Hooper Bay village (Oswalt, 1 952a, p. 55), Tikchik
(VanStone, 1968, pp. 283-284, PI. 6, 14), and Ak-
ulivichuk (VanStone, 1970, p. 68, PI. 1 1, 1 1).

A single net mesh gauge (30) is a made-over
fragment of a bone sled shoe. The gauging distance
of 6 cm may have been designed for nets for black-
fish or herring (Fig. 17r). Wooden mesh gauges
were recovered at Hooper Bay village (Oswalt,
1952a, p. 55) and Crow Village (Oswalt &
VanStone, 1967, p. 32, PI. 3, k, o, p), and antler
examples were found at Akulivikchuk (VanStone,
1970, p. 61, PI. 9, items 19,20).

The broad, flattened area of a caribou antler tine
has been modified so as to be concave along its
working edge and taper at the proximal end to
form a handle (Fig. 1 7s). This is tentatively iden-
tified as a. fish scaler {3 \). Similar implements from
Old Togiak are made of caribou scapulae (Kowta,
1963, p. 147, PI. 20).

Trapping

Aside from the presence of the hair and bones of
fur-bearing animals, the only direct evidence for
trapping is the presence of five y^ood pelt stretchers
(32). Presumably they were made locally at Paug-
vik rather than obtained as trade items. Hides of
freshly skinned furbearers were turned and
stretched on these frames and traded when dry.

Of the five stretchers, four are complete enough
so that their overall shape can be determined. One
is long and narrow, the upper (nose) end being
extremely thin and pointed and the lower end
rounded and considerably wider. Approximately
40 cm from the lower end there is a triangular
perforation (Fig. 19a). According to present-day
Naknek trappers, this was a stretcher for fox pelts.
The three complete shorter stretchers range in
length from 49 to 63 cm, are broad at the lower
end, and taper slightly to a rounded point at the
upper end (Fig. 19b). One specimen has a series
of vertical cuts on one surface and was evidently
used secondarily as a cutting board. Naknek trap-
pers identified these stretchers as intended for
muskrat pelts. The single incomplete specimen was
apparently once about the same size and shape as
the muskrat stretchers but has been cut off" at the
upper or nose end.

Transportation

Artifacts related to travel are poorly represented.
There is a kayak deck beam (33) made from a
single piece of spruce driftwood, presumably a
curved tree stump (Fig. 1 8a). Data concerning the
construction of a modem kayak at Hooper Bay
suggest that a beam of this length and curvature
would be positioned directly in front or in back
of the cockpit (Zimmerly, 1979, Fig. 74, p. 95). A
complete antler kayak keel protector or shoe (34)
has a pair of holes with antler pegs for attaching
the shoe to the kayak (Fig. 451). Keel protectors
were used at each end of the vessel to protect the
skin cover when the boat was drawn up on the
beach.

Evidence for the use of the large skin boat is
restricted to a single umiak rib or riser (35). The
lower end is notched where the rib would be fitted
to the chine, and the upper end is slightly concave
to receive the gunwale. On the inner side is a notch
where a stringer would be attached. Approxi-
mately 7 cm from the top is a drilled hole and the
remains of a sealskin lashing for the attachment
of the gunwale. There is a similar hole at the lower
end for lashing the rib to a chine (Fig. 20b).

A poorly preserved, wedge-shaped piece of wood
with a rectangular groove at the upper end that
does not completely penetrate the object (Fig. 2 1 f)
is tentatively identified as a sled stanchion (36).
Stanchions were mortised into the top of a runner
and extended to the crosspieces that made up the
bed of the sled.

Part Four

Even more tentative is the identification of a
sled upright (37) for the type of sled with a railing.
This piece is wedge shaped at one end, above which
is a large, oval perforation, and narrows at the
other end, which is broken (Fig. 20a). This upright,
if the identification is correct, may have been placed
toward the rear of the sled, with the perforation
intended to receive the handlebar.

More certainly identified is a fragment of a sled
runner (38) from the front of a sled. The piece has
a slight upward curve and a flat area at the front
to receive a crosspiece. On the side and in the flat
surface are holes for lashing to hold the crosspiece
in place. Along the lower surface of the runner
fragment are holes for the pegs that hold the sled
shoes to the runner. A number of wooden pegs are
still in place (Fig. 21a). This fragment would have
been sufficiently close to the front of the sled to
need no slots in the upper surface to receive stan-
chions.

The 15 antler and 15 whalebone sled shoe (39)
fragments range in width from 1 .5 cm to 4 cm and
are as much as 1.2 cm thick, although most are
much thinner. There are irregularly spaced holes
in the shoe fragments for pegging to the sled run-
ners; in no case are there grooves between the holes
that would suggest lashing rather than pegging (Fig.
1 8c,f,g). Although it might be supposed that antler
would be the most satisfactory material for pegs,
the only pegs in place in a shoe fragment are of
wood. The sled runner described above also has
wooden pegs.

A single wooden snowshoe crosspiece (40) is
thinned at each end for mortising into the outer
frame. Along one edge are three notches to receive
the webbing (Fig. ISe). The absence of holes
through which webbing could be strung suggests
the relatively crude type of snowshoe with coarse
sealskin webbing intended for use on frozen snow
or on the rough surface of the sea ice (Nelson,
1983, pp. 213-214, Fig. 64). Similar crosspieces
were recovered from the Hooper Bay Village site
(Oswalt, 1952a, p. 67, PI. 5, 14) and Old Togiak
(Kowta, 1963, pp. 177-178, PI. 25, k,l).

Maintenance Network

Tools

A large percentage of the tools received from the
Paugvik site are traditional Eskimo forms, al-
though some incorporate materials of European
origin, such as metal for blades. As a group, tools

include heavy woodworking implements as well
as finer woodworking and antler-carving imple-
ments and skin-working tools. In addition, there
are several implements associated with general
maintenance such as rakes, picks, and a shovel.

The most abundant tool in the collection is the
antler- splitting wedge (41). A total of 30 were re-
covered from the houses and virtually all levels of
the trenches. The typical wedge is made of a sec-
tion of caribou antler cut off" square at one end and
worked to a wedge-shaped bevel at the other. On
most of the wedges the bevel is unifaced to take
advantage of the hard outer part of the antler for
the working edge. Some shaping of the opposite
face is evident on most, however. The wedges vary
in length from 9 cm to 24 cm and average 14 cm
(Fig. 20f,g, 21b-e). Only a few show signs of ex-
tensive use. One is somewhat different, having been
made from the heavy base of an antler and worked
to a bevel at the distal end (Fig. 45 k).

In addition to antler wedges, eight steel wedges
(42) were recovered. Four are rectangular sections
of low-grade steel, cold hammered at one end to
a bifacial bevel (Fig. 20e). Two are made from
iron spikes flattened at the distal end (Fig. 20d).
A single specimen is a heavy, oval steel fragment
cut off" squarely at the top and slightly tapered and
rounded at the other end; it may be unfinished
(Fig. 20c). The eighth specimen was apparently
fashioned from a section of thin steel, round in
cross section, possibly a machine part. It is ffat-
tened at the proximal end, where there is a rect-
angular notch, and flattened to a working edge at
the distal end (Fig. 22d). All these wedges are
heavily rusted.

For driving wedges to split logs, a maul (43) of
wood was used. The single example is round in
cross section with a sharp shoulder and rounded
handle. It shows signs of heavy use and may, in
fact, have been discarded for that reason (Fig. 22a).
Similar mauls of cottonwood were recovered at
the Crow Village site (Oswalt & VanStone, 1967,
PI. 4b).

There are two iron axe heads (44). The first is
roughly rectangular, with a slightly flaring edge and
a thickened poll. The eye is teardrop shaped and
contains a fragment of the helve (Fig. 22b). Nine-
teenth-century axes were usually made in two steps.
One end of an elongated, flat plate of iron was
hammered out while hot and wrapped around a
pattern to form the eye (Russell, 1967, p. 257).
Then a piece of steel was inserted to serve as the
edge and the joints were welded by heating and
hammering (Peterson, 1965, pp. 18-19).

Collections

The second axe head is broken, so that a whole
section is missing on one side from the poll to a
point near the edge. This specimen has a flat poll,
a widely flaring edge, and a pointed lower lip that
grips the handle (Fig. 22c). It closely resembles axe
heads found on Umnak Island in the Aleutians,
described and illustrated by Russell (1967, p. 296,
Fig. 79b), at the Nunakakhnak site on Kodiak Is-
land (Knecht & Jordan, 1985, pp. 26-27, Fig. 8),
and at a site on the southeast coast of the Kenai
Peninsula (Schaaf, 1988, p. 20, PI. XIV). Similar
axe heads have also been recovered from Russian-
American Company sites in Kodiak (Shinkwin &
Andrews, 1 979) and Sitka (Bamett & Schumacher,
1967).

Of two stone adze blades (45), the one from
House 2 is made from a slightly metamorphosed
sedimentary rock that has a pronounced metallic
sheen. It is roughly worked except for a finely
ground working edge, which is V-shaped in cross
section. The blade tapers toward the proximal end
for insertion into a socketed head (Fig. 23f)- The
form is that classed as Adze IV in prehistoric col-
lections of the Naknek region (Dumond, 1981),
where it is characteristic of the first millennium
A.D. The second, from the portion of the 1973
trench that is now recognized as part of House 6,
is slate, more smoothly polished and celtlike even
though the thin blade is also polished only at the
bit (Fig. 46s); classed as Adze II in the earlier
analysis (Dumond, 1981), the form is more char-
acteristic of the latest prehistoric period.

The one stone skin scraper blade (46) is flaked
with a finely polished bit on one end, appearing
adze-like except for its overall narrow shape (Fig.
46u). This form in the earlier analysis (Dumond,
1981) was called End-Shaver II and is character-
istic of the early first millennium a.d.

A possible skin scraper blade blank (47) of vol-
canic stone is roughly chipped on all surfaces,
probably preparatory to the final grinding of a
working edge (Fig. 23b).

A crooked knife handle (48) is made from a
slightly curved piece of antler. At one end is an
open notch 5 cm long to hold the blade, which
was presumably lashed in place (Fig. 23a). There
are three metal crooked knife blades (49), curved
at the distal end (Fig. 23c,d; Dumond, 1981, PI.
XV, Fb).

The collection contains three composite knife
handle (50) halves, two of antler and one of wood,
flat on the inner side and rounded on the outer
surface. Both of the antler specimens have short,
thin blade slots, possibly for metal blades, with

raised lashing lips at the distal end. One has a
raised lashing knob and narrow lashing grooves at
the proximal end, and the other has only a single
lashing groove in this position. There are three
engraved circle-dot designs on one handle half (Fig.
23h). The wooden knife half has a longer, wider
blade slit and a lashing lip at the distal end (Fig.
23g).

Two end-bladed knife blades (5 1) of low-grade
steel have long, thin tangs that narrow toward the
proximal end (Figs. 44b, 45d; Dumond, 1981, PI.
XV, Fa).

A rodent incisor knife (52) has the bit still in
place, hafted in a line with the long axis of a wood-
en handle; there is a pronounced lashing lip. The
handle is constricted toward the proximal end and
on one side is a circular depression, which may
have contained a glass bead or some other deco-
ration (Fig. 23e).

A complete engraving tool (53) has a badly cor-
roded metal blade set into a slit in a crude wooden
handle that has a pronounced lashing lip; the lash-
ing is of narrow strips of baleen (Fig. 23n). Another
example consists of only the distal end of the han-
dle with a lashing knob and an asymmetrical metal
blade (Fig. 45f).

There are two metal knife or engraver fragments
(54) that cannot be further identified with certain-
ty. One is simply the proximal end of a metal blade
embedded in part of an antler handle (Fig. 23o).
The other is half of a composite antler handle, at
the distal end of which is a broad slot and lashing
knob. It may be part of an engraving tool (Fig.
23i).

The 21 whetstones have for description been
divided into five types based on the nature of the
material from which they are made. The eight
specimens of type / (55) are of granitic rock, with
a variety of sizes and shapes represented. All are
fragmentary and are worked on two or more sur-
faces (Fig. 23p-r). The eight of type 2 (56) are of
shale; all are fragmentary and have been worked
on one or more surfaces (Fig. 231,m). The three
type 3 whetstones (57) are fragments of pumice;
two are small and have been worked on one surface
(Fig. 22e), whereas the larger piece has a series of
parallel, deep, narrow grooves on one surface and
appears to have been used as a sharpener for items
such as ulu blades and steel needles (Fig. 24). The
single type 4 specimen (58) is of medium-grain
sandstone, worked on all four surfaces (Fig. 23j).
The single example of type 5 (59), of schist, is
worked on the two narrow surfaces (Fig. 23k).

The category stone saw (60), of which there are

46 Part Four

three in the collection, is separated from other
abrasive stones on the basis of form rather than
material. Generally a relatively thin sandstone slab,
one edge shows heavy wear on two intersecting
planes (Fig. 46o). The function of the artifact is
made clear by the numerous slate slabs with saw
kerfs, illustrating the technique of abrasive sawing
and snapping by which the plentiful slate projectile
inserts, and presumably some slate ulu blades, were
manufactured.

The ulu or woman's knife is represented in the
Paugvik collection by two complete metal imple-
ments, three metal blades, one whole slate ulu
blade, various fragments, and an incomplete
wooden handle. The most impressive complete
metal ulu (61) has a blade of low-grade steel with
a semilunar edge and a large, thick wooden handle
with a centrally located oval slot near the proximal
surface. Narrow striations on both sides of the
handle suggest that it was used occasionally as a
cutting board (Fig. 25b). The other complete ulu
is in very fragile condition. It also has a steel blade
and a narrow wooden handle that turns upward
at one end (Fig. 25a).

Two of the metal ulu blades (62) are of a form
that appears to be unique for the Paugvik site. Both
have a semilunar edge, and extending from one
end is a narrow metal strip that curves upward
and over the top of the blade and ends in a tight
circle or spiral (Fig. 25c,d). These blades are pre-
sumed not to have been of local manufacture and
could be used without the addition of a wooden
handle. Although the shape of the handle of one
of the complete ulus (Fig. 25b) seems to suggest
that it covers such a curved appendage, at the time
it was excavated the wood of the handle was wet
and soft enough to permit examination of the haft
edge of the blade, which was disappointingly
square. The third metal blade is made from tinned
steel plate of the type normally associated with the
manufacture of tin cans. Flat across the top, it has
a semilunar edge (Fig. 25e).

The single whole slate ulu blade (63) is tabular
in form and 4 mm thick, with a cutting edge nearly
60 mm in length (Fig. 46t). The type was earlier
classed (Dumond, 198 1) as Ulu III. Six additional
ulu fragments (64) may relate to the same type,
although at least one of the fragments suggests the
presence of a tang set off from the body of the
blade.

The unattached ulu handle (65) has a broad blade
slit possibly intended to receive a stone blade with-
out a tang (Fig. 45a).

The collection contains a single pair of badly

corroded metal scissors (66), apparently of fully
modem form. The temptation is to consider these
a much more recent intrusion into the site, but the
provenience, essentially on the small piece of the
floor excavated around the hearth of House 2A,
seemed undisturbed and genuine enough at the
time of excavation.

Five objects of bone and antler have been iden-
tified as awls (67). A seal scapula is sharpened to
a point at one end (Fig. 25g) as is a caribou met-
acarpus or metatarsus. The other three specimens
are simply antler fragments worked to a tapering
point at one end (Fig. 25h).

Four retouched stone flakes apparently served
as scrapers or knives (68). Three of these, retouched
along one edge (Fig. 25f), presumably were used
unhafted, but a fourth, from the 1 96 1 excavations,
is partially wrapped with a strip of lead (Dumond,
1981, PI. XV, Cj), suggesting that it must have
been wedged into a haft. Although the other three
objects could belong to an earlier, prehistoric ar-
chaeological horizon of the region, the fourth clearly
does not. In addition, there are two scrapers made
from retouched Augments of green bottle glass (69),
both about 7 cm in thickness (Fig. 25i). Chipped
glass scrapers have been reported from several his-
toric sites in Alaska, and the form is also common
elsewhere in North America.

The collection contains two ivory pick or mat-
tock blades (70), one of which is complete. The
complete specimen is flattened along one surface,
presumably for lashing to a wooden handle, al-
though there are no lashing grooves. The working
edge is beveled and slightly convex (Fig. 26a). The
second blade is fragmentary; only the upper part
is present. One surface is flattened, and there is a
broad groove along one side. Approximately 1 1
cm from the distal end is a broad lashing groove
(Fig. 25j).

A shovel blade (71) is made from the shoulder
blade of a large sea lion or walrus. The acromion
process has been cut away, and a rectangular slot
to receive the handle extends downward from the
glenoid fossa for a distance of 9.5 cm (Fig. 26c).
A similar shovel blade was recovered at the Old
Togiak site (Kowta, 1963, p. 284, PI. 56a).

Two rake prongs (72) are made of antlers. Oval
holes for attachment of the handles have been
drilled near the proximal ends, but the antlers are
otherwise unaltered (Fig. 27b). Nelson (1983, pp.
74-75, PI. XXXV, 2) described and illustrated a
somewhat similar rake from Sabotnisky on the
lower Yukon, where rakes were used to remove
refuse from the fireplace in the qasqig or men's

Collections 47

house, for clearing away refuse material while
building a house, and for clearing drift material
from places where nets or fish traps were set in
rivers and streams.

Tentatively identified as an icepick or chisel (7 3)
is a length of antler rounded and worked to a wedge
shape at the distal end. The upper half of this
implement is deeply recessed, presumably to re-
ceive a long wooden handle. In the center of this
recessed area is a round lashing hole, and there is
a lashing knob at the proximal end (Fig. 27e).

Three flattened pieces of wood, oval in cross
section, are tentatively identified as snow beaters
(74) for beating snow from clothing and other ob-
jects. The two complete specimens taper slightly
at the proximal end to form a handle (Fig. 27a,d).
Somewhat similar implements from various lo-
cations in Alaska were described and illustrated
by Nelson (1983, pp. 77-78, Fig. 21).

Unidentified metal objects (75) that are pre-
sumed to have been intended as some form of tool
include a section of gun barrel partially flattened
at one end, possibly for use as a hide flesher (Fig.
28f), and a heavy iron ferule that has an attach-
ment hole at the proximal end and tapers to the
distal end, which is broken (Fig. 27c). A piece of
steel with what appears to be a concave working
edge may be the blade for an ulu.

Numerous items of stone are apparently arti-
facts in the process of manufacture. Six of these
are rather clearly sawed slate blanks (76) for insert
blades, completely cut to basic form, but not yet
sharpened and faceted (Fig. 46p>-r). The majority
of the rest are 5 1 sawed slate pieces (77) charac-
terized by the presence of saw kerfs but of no ap-
parent final shape. There are also 25 miscellaneous
polished stone scraps (78), largely slate, that may
be unidentifiable fragments of ulus or insert blades
or, in a few cases, chips from the resharpening of
stone adze blades.

The 1 7 crudely chipped bifaces (79) of slate or
shale are also presumably artifacts in process of
manufacture (Fig. 46b-d). These are scattered
through the site, but more than half were recovered
from the 1973 trench. Of those recovered in 1985,
six are lanceolate in form, 55-90 mm in length,
and are presumably blanks awaiting polishing into
lance heads. Although chipping before grinding is
indicated for some Pavik phase artifacts, these bi-
faces are also reminiscent of artifacts termed lan-
ceolate biface classes I and II (i.e., those above and
below 70 mm in length), which are especially char-
acteristic of the Brooks River Camp phase of the
early second millennium a.d. in the Naknek region

(Dumond, 1981), when the basic shape of slate
implements was formed before polishing by chip-
ping rather than sawing. One of these from Paug-
vik is a slate ellipsoid 50 mm long, again remi-
niscent of the Camp phase.

One slab of a fractured cobble is heavily stained
with red hematite in its fortuitous basin, evidently
from use as an ochre anvil (80) in crushing paint.
There are eight heavily scarred pebbles that have
been used as hammerstones or pounders (81).

Household Equipment

All domestic equipment not considered in previ-
ous sections is described here, including wooden
serving and storage vessels and utensils, pottery
and stone lamps, other ceramics, and woven ma-
terials.

There are three wooden compound vessels (82)
that are sufficiently complete so that their size and
form can be determined with certainty. These ves-
sels are of two-piece construction, consisting of a
flat, oval bottom and a thin strip bent around to
form the sides. The overlapping ends of the side
pieces are fastened together by sewing strips of root
through holes drilled for the purpose. Base pieces
have chamfered edges to fit into a groove around
the inner edge of the side pieces.

The first of these vessels is complete except for
a section of one side. The two ends of the side,
which is 4.5 cm high, are lap-spliced with root
through two parallel rows of slits. On the bottom
of this vessel are two shallow incisions in the form
of a cross (Fig. 26b). The second vessel is very
shallow and complete but badly warped; a portion
of the bottom is split. The two ends of the side,
which is 3 cm high, are fastened together with root
through a single row of slits (Fig. 28b). Much of
the rim of the third vessel is missing, but it is clear
that the two ends of the side piece were lashed
together through two parallel rows of slits. In ad-
dition to the groove on the inner edge of the side,
four wooden pegs, one on each side and end, held
the bottom in place.

Seven fragments of compound vessel sides (83)
were recovered, only one of which is complete
enough to indicate the height of the vessel. This
fragment is from a much larger container than the
complete vessels just described and lacks a groove
running around the lower edge to receive the vessel
bottom (Fig. 28c). A much smaller fragment does
show this groove (Fig. 28d). The rims on three

Part Four

fragments are rounded. All fragments show lashing
that held the two ends of the side together. On the
two more complete fragments the ends of the side
were fastened with root lashing through a single
row of slits.

The collection contains 17 fragmentary com-
pound vessel bottoms (84), and on the basis of size
and shape two types can be differentiated. The first
type includes six fragments of oval vessel bottoms,
none of which are chamfered to fit into grooves
in the sides. Most are from relatively large vessels,
the longest being approximately 29 cm in length,
the smallest 8 cm (Fig. 28a,e). Three apparently
consisted of two pieces of wood, probably equal
halves, pegged together with wooden pegs. Both
lashing and pegs were used to fasten two of these
bottoms to the sides. Two bottoms were appar-
ently used as cutting boards, perhaps after being
discarded as vessels, and two are badly charred.

The second type of vessel bottom, of which there
are six in the collection, is very small. All were
apparently round or nearly so and may be the bases
of trinket or snuffboxes similar to those illustrated
by Nelson (1983, PI. LXXXVI) rather than of
household containers (Fig. 29i). It is also possible
that one or more of these round, flat pieces of wood
are poke stoppers associated with the storage of
food or seal oil. However, they lack the deep lash-
ing grooves usually found on plugs and stoppers.

Nine relatively whole spoons (85), eight of antler
and one of wood, and two additional fragments
were excavated from the Paugvik site. Three of
the antler specimens have elongated oval bowls
and straight handles of various lengths (Fig.
29a,c,g). Two have deeper, more carefully shaped
bowls; the handle of one widens at the proximal
end (Fig. 29d), and the handle of the other has a
pronounced curve (Fig. 45i; Dumond, 1981, PI.
XVII, Dg). One specimen has paired parallel in-
cised lines running around the edges (Fig. 29c),
and another has a ribbed handle with a single
straight incised line in the center of the bowl (Fig.
29a). The single wooden spoon is much more
crudely made; it is a narrow strip of wood hol-
lowed out at the wider distal end to form the bowl
(Fig. 29e).

Of the fragmentary spoons, one is the handle of
a much larger wooden specimen broken off at the
point where it widens to form the bowl (Fig. 30b).
The other, of antler, consists of the bowl only.
Running down the center is a single incised line
that terminates in a Y pattern ornamented with
spurred lines (Fig. 29f). Spoons similar to those
from Paugvik were described and illustrated by

Nelson (1983, p. 69, PI. XXX, 207) and were re-
covered from the Old Togiak site (Kowta, 1963,
p. 281, PI. 55, a-g).

Five large spoonlike objects are identified as la-
dles (86). Two antler specimens have spatulate
bowls that are flat at the distal end (Fig. 30e,g).
The wooden ladle consists of a bowl only, which
is shaped like the bowls of the complete spoons
but is larger (Fig. 300- Two ladles, one of antler
and the other of bone, are simply large, irregularly
shaped bowls that would have had separate, at-
tached handles (Fig. 30c,d). The antler specimen
has a pair of drilled holes at the proximal end for
this purpose (Fig. 30c). These two objects may be
small shovels.

The Paugvik collection contains one complete
dipper (87) and two fragments. The complete dip-
per of wood is carefully made, with a bowl that
has a flat bottom and sides that slope out toward
the rim. The handle flares at the proximal end,
which is rounded (Fig. 30a). A similar dipper,
identified as a ladle, was recovered at Crow Village
(Oswalt & VanStone, 1967, p. 35, PI. 5, f). A single
small fragment from the point where the handle
joins the bowl appears to be from a similar dipper.

A large dipper fragment is made from a single
piece of wood carefully fashioned into a thin han-
dle at one end and thinned down to a wedge-shaped
point at the other. The wood was then steamed
and bent to form the sides of a circular bowl and
lashed just inside the base of the handle (Fig. 30h).
The bottom would have been a separate piece.
This type of dipper, common throughout south-
western Alaska, was described and illustrated by
Nelson (1983, pp. 65-66, PI. XXIX, 6-8).

A spoon-shaped water bag nozzle (88) of antler
somewhat resembles similar objects from south-
western Alaska illustrated by Nelson (1983, p. 74,
PI. XXXIIIa, 5). These bags, made from the stom-
achs or bladders of animals, were used to carry
water or oil while on hunting trips at sea; they had
wooden stoppers (Fig. 29j). The collection also
contains two other antler nozzles that obviously
are for containers of some sort (Fig. 29h,l). One
of these has a projecting lip (Fig. 29h) and may
have been a bladder float nozzle (89).

Two large fragments of conical, loosely woven,
twined grass bags (90) appear to be from those
that according to Nelson (1983, p. 203) were used
to hold fish. The tops consist of two parallel rows
of two-strand braided grass. Bags with similar tops,
although more closely woven, were illustrated by
Fitzhugh and Kaplan (1982, p. 125) and Kaplan

Collections 49

and Barsness (1986, p. 122). Fish bags of this type
were also used on Nunivak Island (Lantis, 1946,
Fig. 17 opp. p. 177).

Twined work is also represented by seven mat
or bag fragments (9 1 ) varying in fineness of weave.
The coarser examples may be parts of sleeping
maps similar to one described and illustrated by
Nelson ( 1 983, p. 203, PI. LXXIV, 1 5), but all four
could be bag fragments. All fragments may have
been more tightly woven than they appear at pres-
ent (Figs. 31-33). In addition to the twined frag-
ments, the collection contains eight fragments of
braided grass cordage (92) (Figs. 34, 35).

The single fragment of a birch bark basket (93)
indicates that the vessel was made from one piece
of bark folded at the four comers and then stitched,
probably with spruce root as indicated by the large
and widely spaced stitching holes. Three small birch
bark fragments may also be from baskets. Con-
tainers of birch bark are commonly associated with
interior Eskimo settlements in southwestern Alas-
ka and have been recovered from the Crow Vil-
lage, Tikchik, and Akulivikchuk sites (Oswalt &
VanStone, 1967, pp. 47^8, PI. lib; VanStone,
1968, p. 283; 1970, p. 67, PI. 11, 13).

The collection includes several metal kettle parts
(94). A cast iron kettle rim fragment includes a
circular lug welded to the rim and is from an ex-
tremely large vessel (Fig. 30i). There are also two
lugs for kettle handles of the type that was riveted
to the kettle rim on opposite sides just below the
lip. One lug is brass (Fig. 29k) and the other is cast
iron (Fig. 45b). A brass kettle lid (94) has raised
edges and a ring handle. Attached to the handle is
a short strip of two-strand braided grass (Fig. 45j).
A round brass box (95) has a convex top with
recessed lower edges and a flat bottom (Fig. 45g).

The saucer-shaped pottery lamp (96), wide-
spread through southwestern Alaska, is repre-
sented by four virtually complete examples and
sherds that represent seven additional lamps. The
complete specimens are all undecorated and are
fired poorly, if at all. The temper of these is pre-
dominantly grass, although some gravel can be
noted in at least one. The walls are thick, and the
pronounced rims are rounded. Three lamps are
extremely shallow (Fig. 36a, b), while the fourth
is deeper (Fig. 37a).

Grass is also the predominant temper in the
fragments, with one exception that appears to be
tempered primarily with hair. All are poorly fired,
and at least two are from lamps even shallower
than any of the complete examples; on one of these
fragments the lip barely projects above the surface.

Oswalt (1952b, pp. 21-22) suggested that saucer-
shaped clay lamps were derived from the conical-
bottomed, wide-mouth clay lamp common in
northern Alaska during the early phases of Eskimo
prehistory. Early examples of the saucer-shaped
clay lamp have been excavated from sites in the
Kobuk River-Kotzebue Sound region, from which
they evidently spread to the Bristol Bay-Norton
Sound area.

Four stone lamps (97) were also recovered at
Paugvik. One of these is crudely worked from a
roughly circular piece of granitic rock flattened on
one side and hollowed out on the other. It is en-
crusted with carbon (Fig. 29b). Two others are
heavy stone spalls with fortuitous basins that ap-
pear from carbon deposits to have been pressed
into service as lamps. A fourth, also of granitic
rock, has been carefully worked to an elongated
oval shape. This lamp is shallow with a rounded
lip and shows signs of use (Fig. 37b). Because it
resembles lamps from phases of the first millen-
nium A.D. (e.g., Dumond, 1981, PI. VI, Fc, PI. XI,
De), it may have been salvaged by Paugvik resi-
dents from earlier sites in the Naknek River re-
gion.

In addition to the bottle glass scrapers, the col-
lection contains six small bottle glass fragments
(98). Two of these, one green and the other brown,
are approximately 0.8 cm thick; a third is a bottom
fragment from a small bottle of clear glass. The
remaining fragments are extremely small and thin,
ranging in thickness from 1 to 2 mm. One is a
fragment of a faceted bottle.

Excavations at the Paugvik site in 1961 and
1973 yielded only eight nondescript chinaware
fragments (99). In 1985, 40 fragments were re-
covered. Most of those collected, like those from
other historic sites in southwestern Alaska, are
sherds of factory-made ironstone (earthenware), a
utilitarian stoneware variant that was extremely
popular during the 19th century, particularly in
frontier areas, because of its strength and dura-
bility.

Chinaware sherds from the 1985 excavations
were each assigned a serial number and then a
potential vessel number, as nearly as such an as-
signment could be made from appearance alone,
for none of the sherds could be fitted to one an-
other (Table 3). Looked at in this way the 40 sherds
could come from no more than 3 1 vessels, but in
two cases where sherds were indicated as possibly
from the same vessel (nos. 3 and 24, and nos. 1 5,
34, and 37) the proveniences of the separate sherds
were so widely separated that their origins in a

Part Fovu-

single vessel seems unlikely. Thus the 40 sherds
probably represent at least 35 different vessels.

Factory-made ceramics are commonly the most
voluminous trade goods excavated from historic
sites in southwestern Alaska. Nearly 6,000 chi-
naware fragments have been excavated from six
published sites along the Kuskokwim and Nush-
agak rivers and on Lake Clark (Oswalt & Van-
Stone, 1967, pp. 52-55; VanStone, 1968, pp. 288-
292, 1970, pp. 74-81, 1972, pp. 55-60; VanStone
& Townsend, 1970, pp. 75-86; Oswalt, 1980, pp.
70-73). Decorative types recovered from these sites
consist primarily of plain, under-glazed lined, cut
sponge-stamped, hand-painted, and transfer-
printed wares. Although there is some late 19th-
and early 20th-century American ironstone in the
assemblages, the majority is the standard British
export ware described by Jewett (1878) that sus-
tained the North American market in the 19th
century.

British ceramics reached Alaska through the
Russian-American Company, which found it
cheaper and more convenient to obtain manufac-
tured goods that reached the Northwest Coast on
British and American ships rather than to rely on
the long overland or ocean supply lines to Russia.
In 1839 the Hudson's Bay Company contracted
to supply Russian America with provisions and
manufactured goods, and the agreement became
effective in 1840. After 10 years, the agreement
was not renewed (Davidson, 1941; Gibson, 1976,
pp. 83, 139, 200-208). Nevertheless, the ceramic
supply network, which came to include an increas-
ing number of Staffordshire and other British pot-
teries, continued after the sale of Alaska to the
United States in 1867.

The number of exotic contact-period ceramic
fragments recovered from the Paugvik site is thus
unusually small. There are no identifiable maker's
marks, and only five patterns can be identified:
"Willow," "Watteau," "Cherry Picking," "Cam-
illa," and possibly "Davenport" (Fig. 38). Only
the ubiquitous "Willow" pattern has been report-
ed from all the other excavated sites in south-
western Alaska, and the "Cherry Picking" pattern
occurs at Crow Village (Table 3). The "Camilla"
and "Watteau" patterns were recovered at the Nu-
nakakhnak site on Kodiak Island (Knecht & Jor-
dan, 1985, Table 1, p. 25).

The number of decorated china ware sherds from
the Paugvik site is also too small to permit mean-
ingful comparison with other sites and thus at first
glance seems not to provide new information re-
lating to the chronological or distributional ques-

tions associated with this particular trade item. It
is certainly significant, however, that the residents
of Paugvik apparently had restricted access to ce-
ramics, as compared with the residents of other
excavated village and trading post sites in the re-
gion.

Aside from the clay lamps, ceramics of aborig-
inal type are of what has been classed as Naknek
ware (100-106), one of two ware types known for
the region prehistorically (Dumond, 1981). Nak-
nek ware vessels are patch modeled and paddled
against the hand, tan to black in color, baked in
an open fire, and when found commonly have
caked food residues in the interior. The range of
shapes in any one period is limited. Techniques
of clay treatment are poor, resulting in consider-
able variation in frequency and distribution of
temper, which is predominantly water-worn grav-
el in such quantity as to result in a pronouncedly
crumbly fracture, and varying directly in size with
the vessel wall thickness. Grass may also be pres-
ent, and temper fraction may vary significantly
over different parts of the vessel.

Naknek ware is then divided into two subclass-
es, depending simply on thickness, in a division
that has been shown to be temporally significant
(Dumond, 198 1). Naknek thin ware has walls less
than 10 mm in thickness and is often relatively
hard. Naknek thick ware has walls of 10 mm or
more, sometimes more than double that dimen-
sion (Fig. 39). In the Paugvik collection there is
no overall surface decoration, so that the only two
types represented are Naknek thin plain, by far
the more common, and Naknek thick plain, much
of which in fact probably pertains to an earlier
occupation in the vicinity. In keeping with the less
than consistent manufacturing techniques, some
otherwise thin vessels may have a few reinforced
sections that in small sherds may be classed as
thick; a few other thick sherds may actually be
derived from lamps (Fig. 39L) rather than from
the ordinary Naknek ware cooking vessels.

Within each type, varieties are distinguished by
vessel shape, chiefly indicated by rim sherds. There
are four of these varieties represented at Paugvik.

The Camp variety (102, 106) appears in both
types but is far more common in thick plain. The
variety is characterized by a globular shape with
in-sloping lips that restrict a neckless opening (Fig.
39K,L). The base tends to be small, although not
pointed but tapering to a flat area (Dumond, 1981,
Fig. A.l). There are examples of this rim in the
Paugvik collection but no examples of the base.

The Pavik variety (101) is confined to the Nak-

CoUections 5 1

Table 3. Chinaware sherds from the 1985 Paugvik excavations.

Sherd Vessel

no. Unif no. Description

1 HI 1 Base and foot of a transfer-printed cup (Fig. 38b). The letters ORT on the

base are probably final letters of the word DAVENPORT, a factory at
Longport in the Staffordshire Potteries. This firm, which exported widely
to North America, was in existence from c. 1793 to 1887, and after 1850
their wares were normally marked with the name Davenport (Godden,
1964, p. 189).

2 HI 2 Plain (?) fragment of ironstone from a plate or saucer.

3 H2 3 Blue transfer-printed cup rim with handle junction (Fig. 38g), manufactured

by the Copeland Spode factory. The pattern is "Watteau" (Sussman,
1979, p. 231) and has been recovered from Hudson's Bay Company sites
in western Canada.

4 H2 4 Fragment of transfer-printed plate rim (Fig. 38c) manufactured by Cope-

land and Garrett, Spode Works, Stoke, Staffordshire Potteries, between
1833 and 1847. The design is called "Cherry Picking" and dates from
1838. It was not recorded by Sussman (1979) and is not generally known
to have been exported to North America (Louise M. Jackson, personal
communication). However, it was recovered from the Crow Village site.

Plain plate (ironstone) foot.

Transfer-printed blue willow pattern border. ^

Plain fragment (plate?). -^

Transfer-printed blue willow plate soup rim with moulded ridge.

Transfer-printed blue willow border of rim fragment.

Transfer-printed blue willow pattern. Possibly the ball of a soup plate
shoulder or rim.

Plain or cream fragment, possibly from a soup plate or saucer.

Blue transfer-printed cup body; staining on the inside.

Plain fragment from shoulder of a soup plate.

Brownware fragment of the lid of a storage vessel.

Fragment of green transfer-printed cup (see comment to sherd no. 34).

Plain plate body fragment with illegible impressed mark.

Flake with no glaze, unidentifiable.

Fragment from brownware storage vessel.

Plain fragment of moulding around plate rim; ironstone.

Rim fragment of porcelain bowl with plain pink band on the outside.

Body fragment of brownware serving bowl.

Blue floral transfer-printed cup fragment, possibly a Copeland and Garrett
or W. T. Copeland piece (Louise M. Jackson, personal communication).

Fragment of plate body without glaze on either side.

Transfer-printed blue cup fragment (Fig. 38d) with the "Watteau" pattern
(see Sussman, 1979, p. 231). Possibly same as sherd no. 3, although pro-
veniences differ.

Body fragment of utilitarian brownstone serving vessel.

Basal fragment of utilitarian brownstone vessel with part of an impressed
mark, enclosed in a circle; includes the final letters of two words, REENS
in a curve at the top of the circle, and SIDE horizontally across the mid-
dle. It has not been possible to identify this mark.

Chip from a utilitarian brownstone vessel.

Fragment of plate with blue feather edge. A hole has been drilled through
the shoulder.

Body fragment of blue transfer-printed plate.

Fragment of blue transfer- printed plate. '

Plain plate or soup plate fragment.

Plain cup fragment.

Body fragment of blue transfer-printed cup (Fig. 38a) with the "Camilla"
pattern manufactured by Copeland and Garrett and W. T. Copeland of
Stoke, Staffordshire Potteries, from 1833 and still manufactured by Spode
Limited (Sussman, 1979, p. 83).
34 T2 11 Fragment of green transfer-printed plate rim. It could belong to the same

vessel as no. 15, and no. 37, although proveniences differ. The pattern
design may be "Davenport IV," illustrated by Williams and Weber
(1986, p. 168), made by the Davenport factory (see sherd no. 1).

52 Part Four

Table 3. Continued.

Sherd
no.

Unit^

Vessel
no.

Description

Bowl fragment with hand-painted brown band on the outside.
Plain plate body fragment with fragmentary unidentified impression.
Green transfer-printed body fragment (see sherd nos. 1 5 and 34).
Unidentified flake without glaze.
Blue transfer-printed flake.
Blue transfer-printed flake.

'^ H = house; T = trench.

nek thin plain type and has an unrestricted opening
and sides tapering outward in flower-pot form,
often with an additional slight flare at the lip (Fig.
39B-G). In some cases, this flare occurs above a
very slight constriction after the manner of the so-
called situla shape that has been described for his-
toric-period ceramics in western Alaska to the north
(e.g., Oswalt, 1955). The base of this variety is flat
and relatively wide (Fig. 39M).

The Brooks River variety (103) of the Naknek
thin plain type has a form approaching that of a
cylinder or barrel (Fig. 3 9 A). Although not gen-
erally found in vessels of Naknek ware paste any-
where in the region (where the shape commonly
pertains to the earlier Brooks River ware with dis-
tinctive fiber-tempered paste), some rims at Paug-
vik cannot reasonably be assigned to any other
shape. Unfortunately, the restriction at the lip of
such vessels may be pronounced enough that rim
sherds too small to reveal the conformation of the
lower vessel walls can be mistaken for the lips of
globular pots and so classed as Camp variety. This
may be the case with some sherds in the present
collection (Table 2). The base of vessels of this
variety are indistinguishable from those of the Pa-
vik variety (Fig. 39M).

The exterior ridged variety (104) is represented
by even fewer sherds. The total vessel shape is
evidently that of the Pavik variety, of which this
may be considered a variant, in which the wet clay
was pinched into a pronounced horizontal ridge
somewhat below the lip (Fig. 39H), as though to
emphasize the thickened region that often occurs
in that portion of the vessel walls (e.g.. Fig.
39B,D,E). This is the only approach to decorative
treatment in the Pavik ceramic collection.

In the Naknek region, the Naknek thick plain
type. Camp variety, is characteristic of the period
from about a.d. 1000 to 1450, the time of the
Brooks River Camp phase (Dumond, 1981). The
Naknek thin plain type in the same variety, in-
cluding some vessels with exterior ridges, appears

thereafter in the Brooks River Blufls phase. The
Pavik variety of the Naknek thin plain type is then
present in quantity only in the Pavik phase of
historic times. In the present case, as has been
indicated, the majority of the Naknek thick plain
potsherds of the Paugvik site are thought to rep-
resent earlier deposits located in the vicinity or in
some cases to possibly result from misclassifica-
tion of small fragments of clay lamps.

Personal Adornment

A total of 538 complete glass trade beads (107)
were recovered from the Paugvik site in 1 985, with
317 recorded for the trenches of 1961 and 1973
(Table 4). Although most were probably used as
items of personal adornment, it is probable that a
few may have served to decorate other items of
material culture. For present purposes, the 1985
sample is deemed of ample size for analysis, in-
asmuch as an examination of the earlier material
revealed no apparent difference in the range of
types.

The bead typology developed by Kenneth and
Martha Kidd ( 1 970) is here applied to the Paugvik
bead sample of 1985, although some problems
were encountered in its use. Colors were some-
times difficult to define or assign, and it was also
difficult at times to separate precisely the "round"
bead varieties from the "circular" varieties. As a
result, there may be some mixture of such Kidd
varieties as IVa6 and IVa7. A total of 1 16 beads,
or 20% of the 1985 collection, could not be as-
signed within the original Kidd classification, which
for present purposes was expanded to accommo-
date the Paugvik sample. Table 4 gives a complete
list of the number and varieties of beads excavated
at Paugvik in 1985.

The 54 bead varieties from the site represent
eight separate Kidd types. The most frequently
occurring variety is Ila 1 4, circular in shape, opaque,

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Collections 55

Table 5. Types and varieties of beads in the 1985
Paugvik sample.

Table 6. Comaline d' Aleppo red beads from south-
western Alaskan sites.''

Kidd no.

No. of beads

No. of present
varieties''

165

Ila

200

Ilia

Illf

IVa

110

Wlb

Wlc

Total

583

" Kidd tyj)es have been expanded for present uses. See
Table 4.

and white. The second most common is Ia5, a
tubular opaque white bead. The nine most com-
monly occurring varieties account for 61% of the
total bead sample. Rounded beads (represented by
Kidd classes I and III) make up 53% of the sample.
The greatest number of beads of any one type is
1 84 beads of type Ila, representing 20 different
varieties. Type la, with 165 beads, is represented
by 1 1 varieties at Paugvik. Of the 116 beads that
could not be placed within the Kidd classification,
98 belong to types Ilia and IVa, tubular and cir-
cular beads of opaque oyster white with a white
interior. The assemblage includes only 15 wire-
wound beads, or 2.5% of the sample. The total
Kidd types and varieties, as expanded for the pres-
ent analysis, are listed in Table 5.

For a comparison of the Paugvik beads with
those from other historic sites in southwestern
Alaska, perhaps the most significant varieties are
circular or round beads with opaque red exteriors
and clear green or brown interiors (IIIa3, IVa5-
6), of which there are 82 examples, comprising
14% of the sample. These are varieties for a form
known as Comaline d' Aleppo, which derives its
name from association with the Italian export
business with the city of Aleppo in Syria. This sort
of bead was widely distributed among Indians of
North America in the first half of the 19th century
(Orchard, 1929, p. 87; Woodward, 1965, pp. 19-
20). Of the two primary varieties of Comaline
d' Aleppo bead, the green- and brown-lined red
forms occur chronologically earlier in the eastem
United States and Canada than do those with white
cores, a variety absent from the Paugvik sample
but present in bead assemblages from other sites
in southwestern Alaska. Previous students of beads
from archaeological sites in this region have be-
lieved that both forms were introduced into Alas-

Site

No. of
beads

"White "Green "Brown
lined" lined" lined" centers

Black

«6

Paugvik 583

Crow Village 416

Akulivikchuk 537

Tikchik 407

Kijik 1,229

111

Kolmakov-

skiyR. (2,431)

Russian

levels

U.S. levels

" Based on information from Oswalt and VanStone
(1967), VanStone (1968, 1970), VanStone and Town-
send (1970), and Oswalt (1980).

* Possibly a misidentification of green-lined red.

ka after extensive use elsewhere in North America
but that the exact time of introduction cannot be
determined (Oswalt & VanStone, 1967, p. 60;
VanStone, 1968, p. 295; VanStone & Townsend,
1970, p. 97).

Distribution of Comaline d' Aleppo beads at ex-
cavated historic sites in southwestem Alaska is
shown in Table 6.

A large number of white-lined red beads were
found at the Kijik site, which may have been oc-
cupied somewhat later than the others. Also, at
Kolmakovskiy Redoubt beads that are "red with
black centers" occur in approximately equal num-
bers in both Russian- and U.S.-period levels. Be-
cause the clear centers of the green-lined red beads
appear black unless held up to the light, the Kol-
makovskiy beads may be the green-lined red va-
riety. In any event, they cannot be said to be an
exclusively Russian import. The white-lined red
form also occurs in both the Russian- and U.S.-
period levels but in much smaller numbers.

South of Bristol Bay the picture is somewhat
clearer. Bead assemblages from Chirikof Island
south of Kodiak (Workman, 1 969), the Korov-
inskii site on Atka Island in the Aleutians (Veltre,
1979), Reese Bay on Unalaska Island (Francis,
1988), and Nunakakhnak on Kodiak Island (Sha-
piro, 1988) indicate that the green-lined red va-
riety was imported into Alaska relatively early in
the 19th century. The Chirikof Island site was
abandoned by the time of the Alaska purchase of
1867, and thus all trade goods recovered there
belong to the Russian period. The Chirikof col-
lection includes 45 green-lined red beads and a
single white-lined red example, which Workman
(1969, pp. 200-212) believed had been imported

Part Four

from the interior. The Korovinski collection con-
tains 1 1 green-lined red beads but no white-lined
red examples, and because the site was largely
abandoned by 1872 the beads there can also be
considered of Russian importation. Longhouses at
the Reese Bay site were abandoned about 1806,
and approximately 10% of the beads recovered
from them were the green-lined form. At the Nu-
nakakhnak site, apparently abandoned in the 1 880s
(Knecht & Jordan, 1985, p. 21), 37% of the re-
covered beads were the Comaline d' Aleppo form;
those with a light green center were by far the most
common. Thus, Workman (1969, p. 204) was ap-
parently correct when he noted that the green-lined
red form of the Comaline d' Aleppo is "a marker
of Russian contact in this area."

The absence of the white-lined red variety at
Paugvik seems significant. Nevertheless, given the
conflicting evidence at Chirikof Island, Korovin-
ski, and Kolmakovskiy Redoubt, as well as the
presence of both varieties at Kijik, Crow Village,
and the Nushagak River sites, the precise chro-
nological significance of the Comaline d' Aleppo
beads in southwestern Alaska still wants clarifi-
cation.

Also of interest in the bead assemblage at Paug-
vik are the large number of white beads that cannot
be accommodated within the Kidds' classification
system (Table 4). These beads are oyster white on
the exterior with an opaque white core. Although
a wide range of beads of various sizes and colors
were recovered from the historic sites in south-
westem Alaska, the aboriginal people were ap-
parently partial to white beads, as this was the
predominant color present in the assemblages from
all the Nushagak River sites except Nushagak it-
self, as well as those from Kijik, Crow Village, and
Kolmakovskiy. Most of the beads are described
simply as "white" without reference to exterior/
interior differences, but at Akulivikchuk (Van-
Stone, 1 970, p. 84) and Kijik (VanStone & Town-
send, 1970, p. 94), a large number exhibited a
variation between exterior and interior color. If
the white beads from all these sites were reex-
amined, a considerable number probably would
be found to have cores that differ slightly in color
from the exteriors.

A single flat native bead o^MgMXt (108) appears
to represent an item manufactured in aboriginal
style.

With the exception of beads, few items of per-
sonal adomment were recovered from the Paugvik
site. There are two brass ^«^^r rings (109; Fig.
38h) and a circular band of soft binding iron that

may have been wom as a bracelet (1 10). A bear's
tooth has been drilled along one side at the edge
and may have been wom by itself or as part of a
necklace (111; Fig. 38f). An antler hair comb (112;
Fig. 38j) is roughly rectangular in shape, with a
series of short, closely spaced teeth at one end.
The teeth appear to be too closely spaced for the
implement to have been used for shredding grass
or sinew.

Smoking Complex

A rectangular section of antler may be one side of
an oval snuffbox {Wi). The edges of the fragment
are omamented with parallel incised lines and in
the center are a pair of incised circle designs with
radiating spurs (Fig. 38i). For smoking, fungus ash
was frequently mixed with tobacco to improve the
taste and to make the tobacco last longer. The
collection contains a single piece of birch fungus
(1 14). These fungi, cut from trees in the interior,
were traded to the coast by Athapaskan Indians
(Nelson, 1983, p. 271).

Toys

There are two fragments of toy bows (115), one
with a simple rounded nock and the other with a
nock that is roughly diamond shaped. Both are
ovoid in cross section, but the smaller is relatively
wide and flat (Fig. 38k,l).

Ceremonial Objects

A single unfinished mask of wood (116) was re-
covered from the Paugvik site. The shaping ap-
pears to be virtually complete, but the nose, eyes,
and mouth are barely indicated. On the reverse
side the surface is nearly flat except for the area
that would fit over the nose of the wearer (Fig.
40a). There are also three mask appendages (117)
for the type of composite mask characteristic of
southwestem Alaska. The first is fragmentary and
roughly paddle shaped (Fig. 38e). The second is
in the shape of a human hand with a hole through
the palm (Fig. 38m). Pierced hand appendages are
believed to have been associated with masks rep-
resenting powerful tuunrat spirits that controlled
the availability of animals on earth. The holes
symbolize the willingness of the spirits to allow
some animals to slip through their fingers, thus

Collections 57

assuring their continued abundance on earth (Fitz-
hugh & Kaplan, 1982, p. 202). Most Yupik carved
hands have four fingers and no thumb, whereas
this one has three fingers and a short thumb. The
more problematic mask appendage is a piece of
wood carved in the shape of a human leg (Fig.
45e).

Two wooden human^^r/n^5 (1 18) are worked
to a point at one end. On the larger, which is very
poorly preserved, the head and shoulders are de-
picted but the features have been obliterated (Fig.
40c). A similar figurine was recovered at Paugvik
by Larsen (1950, Fig. 55a, 7). The smaller depicts
only the head, but the incised features are clearly
indicated. The marks of a rodent tooth tool are
clearly visible on this figurine (Fig. 40b).

Miscellaneous

A bundle of grass wrapped with a sealskin thong
may have served as a respirator ( II 9) for a person
taking a sweat bath, although Nelson (1983, p.
288) indicates that these respirators were usually
made of wood shavings (Fig. 40d).

Protective Network

Clothing

Fragments of skin and commercial cloth are rel-
atively scarce in the inventory of materials from
the Paugvik site, and most of those recovered are
too small or too poorly preserved for identification
as to the type of apparel they represent. One ex-
planation, of course, is that preservation in many
parts of the site was poor, with frozen sections
discontinuous except for those in Trench 1 and
House 6, and it was only from frozen matrix that
cloth and leather fragments were recovered. Cloth
garments along with those of skin were probably
of importance at the site; when the Korsakovskiy
expedition visited Paugvik in 1818, European
clothing was already among the trade objects most
desired by the natives (VanStone, ed., 1988, pp.
28-29).

There are six fragments of sealskin mukluk soles
(120), all of which are quite small but include an
area of crimping around the toe (Fig. 41c); no up-
per sections were identified.

Three fragments of cut sealskin, each found with

numerous small, deteriorated pieces, may be gar-
ment fragments (121).

Two circular pieces of sealskin with a row of
sewing holes around the edges are identified as
patches (122), probably for parkas or boots but
perhaps for boat covers (Fig. 41a). Large pieces of
sea mammal intestine suggest parts of raincoats
(123).

Five buttons (124) were recovered. Three are
four-hole buttons of wood that are obviously
homemade (Fig. 4 1 f). The fourth is covered with
brown wool fabric and the material of the button
itself cannot be determined (Fig. 41g). Half of a
plain brass button is a coin-shaped disc that once
had an eye of the same material soldered to the
back. Around the edges on the reverse is stamped
"F Barnes & Co." (Fig. 41e). A similar complete
button from the Nushagak site is stamped with
the words "F. BARNES &. CO./LONDON"
(VanStone, 1972, p. 64, PI. 13, 10). It has not been
possible to locate this firm in lists of known button
companies, but buttons of this type, with soldered
eyes, were manufactured between 1812 and 1820
(Olsen, 1963, pp. 31-33). Evidently an attempt
had been made to cut the Paugvik button into
strips.

The two fragments of factory-made shoes {\25)
are too fragmentary to provide much information
about the method of manufacture or to be of chro-
nological significance. A single sole fragment ap-
pears to have been sewn to the upper, the insole
attached to it by a row of wooden pegs that run
longitudinally along the center of the foot; one peg
is still in place (Fig. 41b). In the United States,
machine-made pegs were introduced about 1811,
and a hand-operated pegging machine was pat-
ented in 1829 (Anderson, 1968, pp. 58-59). The
other shoe fragment is the outer section of a heel
made of leather, which had been fastened to the
lifts around the edges and in the center with heavy
iron nails as much as 0.4 cm in diameter. The nail
heads protrude on the outer surface (Fig. 4 Id).

In addition to the skin clothing fragments, there
are 48 sea mammal or caribou skin fragments with
stitching holes (126) along one or more edges, 64
cut skin fragments ( 1 27) presumably associated
with clothing, and 45 uncut skin fragments (128).
Because of the fragility of the deteriorated mate-
rial, these counts are approximate. There are also
two fragments oi knotted sealskin line (129; Fig.
41h) and one fragment oi knotted baleen (130).

Unfortunately, little can be inferred concerning
the European clothing in use because of the small
number and poor condition of those fabrics re-

Part Four

covered. The fibers of the 1 3 cloth fragments (131),
now brown or black in apparent color, are ex-
tremely degraded but appear to be wool of plain
(tabby) weave or twilled weave. Two fragments
may have been originally fulled, and one has a
seam with stitch holes along one edge. On another,
stitch marks and circular impressions indicate that
three buttons had once been sewn along one edge.
On one fragment two paired sets of wefts are ev-
ident, one now black and the other brown. One
fragment is unusual in having two such sets of
wefts, one of wool and the other spun with coarse
animal hair of unknown origin.

the Paugvik shards is very much in keeping with
a date sometime before the sale of Alaska in 1 867.

Two square-cut nails (133) were recovered, on
one of which the head is missing. The complete
nail is within the range of the 40d length. There
are also two badly corroded screws (134) with
rounded heads.

A small fragment of muscovite mica (135) ap-
proximately 2 cm X 1.5 cm may have been part
of the covering for a window. Zagoskin (1967, p.
1 86) mentioned that mica was brought from Sitka
to be used for window panes in the Russian-Amer-
ican Company buildings at Nulato on the Yukon.
The collection also contains one very small frag-
ment of brick (136).

Imported Building Materials

The Paugvik natives had very little access to im-
ported building materials. Some of the few pieces
that were recovered may have been salvaged from
driftwood, and others may be unrelated to occu-
pation of the site.

The 1 1 fragments ofwz>K/ow^/as5( 132) are clear
and small (maximum dimension of the largest is
42 mm) and range in thickness from 1.0 to 2.2
mm, with a mean thickness of 1.51 mm; five of
the 11 are between 1.1 and 1.65 mm. Although
window glass was highly prized by the natives of
southwestern Alaska at least as early as 1 842 (Za-
goskin, 1967, p. 255), such glass was apparently
available at Paugvik only in small quantities. The
Hudson's Bay Company imported English win-
dow glass into the Pacific Northwest from the time
of its establishment there and after 1 840 can be
expected to have been the source for flat glass found
in Alaska at least until 1867. Before the mid- 19th
century the major English production was of spun-
blown crown glass, much of which was very thin
(Roenke, 1978, pp. 5-6). Although large sheets of
this glass show circular patterns of bubbles or im-
perfections, these are almost never discernible in
fragments as small as those reported here. Ac-
cording to Roenke ( 1 978, p. 11 6), the modal thick-
ness of sheet glass fragments found in archaeolog-
ical sites in the Pacific Northwest that were oc-
cupied before 1845 does not exceed 1.4 mm, be-
comes thicker than the mean of the Paugvik shards
only sometime after that date, and exceeds the
thickness of the single thickest Paugvik fragment
only after about 1870. Although variations in the
thickness of such glass products are great enough
to rule out the definitive dating of very small sam-
ples by this measurement alone, the thickness of

Unidentified Objects

There are a large number of unidentified objects,
most of them fragmentary. The more interesting
of these are described according to the material of
which they are made.

Wood

The following objects, complete or nearly so, were
found. Eight are stakes (137) pointed at one end,
ranging in length from 3 cm to 10 cm, two of them
complete (Fig. 42a,c), and the rest are unidentified
(138): a short, handlelike object recessed at one
end, with a sharp shoulder (Fig. 42d); a flat, oval
piece with a series of incised lines on one side (Fig.
42i); an oval shaft with a narrow blade slit at one
end, grooves left by sinew lashing, and narrow,
fringelike slits at the other end (Fig. 42b); an object
wedge shaped at one end and rounded with an
incised groove at the other (Fig. 42j); a piece of
birch bark cut to an oval shape (Fig. 42e); and a
small peg enlarged at one end (Fig. 42g).

Antler, Ivory, Bone

Those unidentified objects (139) illustrated include
a partially exfoliated strip of antler, with incised
eyes at one end as well as a number of other incised
lines, possibly representing an animal or fish (Fig.
43c); a thin antler fragment with parallel incised
lines on one side and a vertical series of drilled
holes, probably part of the rim of something (Fig.
42f); a paddle-shaped object of antler with a pro-

Collections

jection enlarged at the end and a line hole (Fig.
43a); a partially exfoliated antler fragment, pos-
sibly a handle, with a knob at one end on which
a mouth and eyes are incised (Fig. 42k); a forked
handle-like object of antler (Fig. 45c; Dumond,
1981, PI. XVII, Cg); a possible spoon handle of
antler, along the rear of which is a vertical row of
circular depressions that once contained beads,
with one bead still in place (Fig. 45h); two oval
ivory tubes, on one of which are incised lines (Fig.
43d,e); two sea mammal ribs with elliptical per-
forations in one end (Fig. 43f); and a caribou scap-
ula with two round perforations in the blade (Fig.
43b).

Miscellaneous Debris

This section lists manufacturing detritus, items that
appear to have been picked up and purposely
brought to the site, and subsistence byproducts.
Some of these items are confined to those collected
in 1985 (see Table 2).

Scraps of cut or broken material discarded in
manufacture, not yet completely formed for use,
or at times possibly only fortuitously present in-
clude 107 fragments of5/a/e( 140), 31 chips of chert
or quartzite (141), several pieces of pumice (142),
and cut bone, ivory, and antler fragments (143,
144, 145).

Metal scraps include 70 fragments of iron or
steel (146) many of which appear to be cut from
barrel hoops. There are also 2 1 fragments of cop-
per-based alloys of brass or bronze (147). Five of
these have been analyzed for content, confirming
the industrial origin of four of them but suggesting
that one, from Trench 1 (see Part 3) is possibly

native copper (Harritt & Dumond, in prepara-
tion).

Although there were numerous scraps of baleen,
these were not systematically collected, except for
a piece cut into a leaf shape (148; Fig. 42h).

Fragments of remains of Pleistocene woolly
mammoth of Alaska {Mammuthus primigenius)
attest to the proclivity of the Paugvik people for
bringing home segments of tusk and tooth from
mammoth remains that erode regularly from
Pleistocene deposits around the mouth of the Nak-
nek River and upper Bristol Bay. The latest ra-
diocarbon designation associated with Alaskan
mammoth remains is on the order of 1 3,500 years
ago (see, for example, Guthrie, 1 990, p. 244), and
no Alaskan mammoth remains have yet been found
associated with contemporary human traces. But
mammoth tusk or tooth fragments (149) were re-
corded in eight excavation units at Paugvik, tusk
laminae in five of them (in House 2, level A, the
tusk fragment found was apparently used as a net
weight), and cheek teeth or their sections in four
of them.

Remains of more contemporary fauna include
a number of samples of //a/r (150-156), including
that of canids (dog, wolf, or fox), beaver, muskrat,
seal, caribou, bear, and humans. The extensive
bone waste is set out separately in Appendix 1 , by
the original excavation units.

Samples of ash and soil were taken from six of
the hearths excavated in 1985, in the hope that
these samples would provide information regard-
ing use of vegetal materials other than those rep-
resented by scattered remains of fern rhizomes.
The samples were dried and then floated in water,
with preservation and subsequent drying of both
heavy and light fractions. A summary of the rather
disappointing results is given in Table 7.

Part Four

Table 7. Flotation analysis of six Paugvik hearths.

Hearth location

Fraction

HI
HIA

light

heavy

light

heavy
light

heavy

light
heavy

H6 (secondary hearth)''
H6 (main hearth)

light
heavy
light
heavy

Content

charcoal, roots

pulverized mammal bone, bird bone, shell

charcoal, rootlets, mica flecks; 1 probable fish ver-
tebra fragment; grass; calcined bone fragments

same as light, without vertebra; 1 white seed bead

charcoal; twigs; bird bone, probably duck (Alci- /
dae)

small bone, pulverized large mammal bone; 1
piece green glass; salmonid vertebra; bird toes

twigs; charcoal; salmonid vertebra; bird toe

salmonid vertebrae; bird toe; calcined bird bone,
mammal bone

charcoal

pulverized bird bone, mammal bone

charcoal; unbumed wood; grass

pulverized bird or rabbit bone; pulverized shell;
mica flecks; 1 white seed bead

" The small section of fire at the east edge of the house; see Figure 14.

Collections 6 1

11 21 3| 1\
I I I I I I I I I

Fig. 1 6. a, harpoon socketpiece; b, haipoon socketpiece; c, harpoon socketpiece; d, harpoon socketpiece; e, harpoon
socketpiece;/ harpoon dart head; g, float mouthpiece; h, harpoon dart head; /, harpoon foreshaft;7, float mouthpiece;
k, harpoon socketpiece fragment; /, harpoon socketpiece fragment; m. harpwon ice pick; n, lance blade sheath; o,
unfinished arrowhead; p, arrowhead; q, unfinished arrowhead; r, bow fragment; s, wound plug; t, basal fragment of
arrowhead; u, blunt arrowhead; v, blunt arrowhead (fmnh neg. no. A-1 10990).

Part Four

Fig. 17. a, boat or meat hook; b, end blade; c. end blade; d, end blade; e, arrow shaft fragment;/ lurehook shank;
g, gun side plate; h, lurehook shank; /, lurehook; j, bullet mold half; k, arrow shaft fragment; /, leister prong; m,
pointed object; n, pointed object; o. pointed object; p, fish spear pKjint; q, net weight; r, mesh gauge; s, fish scaler (?);
/, net weight; u, net float fragment (fmnh neg. no. A-1 10994).

Collections 63

''I''l''l''ll'l

Fig. 18. a, kayak deck beam; b, net weight; c, sled shoe fragment; d, net weight; e, snowshoe crosspiece;/ sled
shoe; g, sled shoe fragment; h, net weight; /, net weight (fmnh neg. no. A-1 10991).

64 Part Fovir

Fio. 19. a, pelt stretcher; b, pelt stretcher (fmnh neg. no. A-1 10989).

Collections 65

'II1I1I1I1

Fio. 20. a, sled upright; b, umiak rib or riser; c, wedge; d. wedge; e, wedge; / wedge; g, wedge (fmnh neg. no.
A- 110986).

66 Part Four

Fig. 21. a, sled runner; b, wedge; c, wedge; d, wedge; e, wedge;/ sled stanchion (?) (fmnh neg. no. A-1 10988).

Collections 67

;"i ii .1 li

Fig. 22. a, maul; b, axe head; c. axe head; d, wedge; e, whetstone (fmnh neg. no. A-1 10986).

68 Part Four

I I •

llllllll

Fig. 23. a, crooked knife handle; b, skin scraper blade blank; c, crooked knife blade; d, crooked knife blade; e,
rodent incisor knife;/ adze blade; g, composite knife handle; h, composite knife handle; /, knife or engraver fragment;
j, whetstone; k, whetstone; /, whetstone; m, whetstone; n, engraving tool; o, knife or engraver fragment; p, whetstone;
q, whetstone; r, whetstone (fmnh neg. no. A-1 10992).

Collections 69

Fig. 24. Whetstone (fmnh neg. no. A-1 10987).

70 Part Four

Fig. 25. a, ulu; b, ulu; c, ulu; d, ulu; e, ulu;/ scraper or knife; g, awl; h, awl; /, scraper or knife;/ pick or mattock
blade (fmnh neg. no. A-1 10984).

Collections 7 1

Him^^

'■' ' v^'

.''■"' ■'.'.' '

■■.'■• '*•

nTrTiiiy

: V -. •

Fio. 26. fl, pick or mattock blade, b, compound vessel; c, shovel blade (fmnh neg. no. A-1 10982).

72 Part Four

Fig. 27. a. snow beater, b. rake prong; c, unidentified; </,.snow ieater; e, ice pick or chisel (?) (fmnh neg. no.

A- 110993).

Collections 73

''Il'l''li'll'

Fio. 28. a, compound vessel bottom; h, compound vessel; c, compound vessel side; d, compound vessel side; e,
compound vessel bottom;/ unidentified (FMhfH neg. no. A-1 10995).

Part Four

21 31 4 Si

'III

Wt O

Fig. 29. a, spoon; b, lamp; c, spoon, d, spoon; e, spoon;/ spoon; g, spoon; A. bladder float nozzle
(?); /, compound vessel bottom; / water bag nozzle (?); k, lug for kettle handle; /, nozzle (fmnh neg.
no. A- 110985).

Collections 75

Fig. 30. a, dipper; b, spoon fragment; c-g, ladles; h, dipper fragment; /, kettle rim fragment (fmnh neg. no.
A- 110980).

76 Part Four

1 cm

Fig. 3 1 . Mat or bag fragment.

Fig. 33. Mat or bag fragment.

Collections 77

Fig. 35. Braided grass cordage.

Fig. 34. Braided grass cordage.

78 Part Four

Fig. 36. a, lamp; b, lamp (fmnh neg. no. A-1 10981).

Collections 79

centimeters

l| 2| 31 4| !

I I I I I I I I I

Fig. 37. a, lamp; b, lamp (fmnh neg. no. A-1 10983).

80 Part Four

Fig. 38. a, fragment of blue transfer-printed cup with the "Camilla" pattern; b, base and foot of a transfer-printed
cup possibly showing part of the "Davenport" mark; c, fragment of transfer-printed plate rim with the "cherry
picking" pattern; d, transfer-printed blue cup fragment with the "Watteau" pattern; e, mask appendage; / necklace
fragment; g, blue transfer-printed cup rim fragment with the "Watteau" pattern; h. finger ring; /, snuffbox fragment;
j, hair comb; k, toy bow fragment; /, toy bow fragment; m, mask appendage (fmnh neg. no. A- 1 11 335).

Collections

Fig. 39. Pottery profiles.

12 Part Four

Fig. 40. a, unfinished mask; b, human figurine; c, human figurine; d, respirator (?) (fmnh neg. no. A-1 1 1337).

Collections 83

I centimeiert , J

»••••

Fig. 41. a, sealskin patch; b, shoe sole fragment; c, mukluk sole fragment; d, shoe heel fragment; e, brass button;
/ wood buttons; g, cloth covered button; h, knotted sealskin line (fmnh neg. no. A-1 1 1477).

84 Part Four

Mill

Fig. 42. Unidentified objects (fmnh neg. no. A-1 1 1336).

Collections 85

Fig. 43. Unidentified objects (fmnh neg. no. A-1 1 1476).

86 Part Four

Fig. 44. a, harpoon socketpiece; b, knife blade; c, bow fragment; d, harpoon socketpiece; e, harpoon socketpiece
tang fragment; / harpoon ice pick; g, harpoon ice pick (?); h, toggle harpoon head; /, harpoon dart head; / harpoon
dart head; k, harpoon dart head; /, arrowhead; m, harpoon foreshaft (fmnh neg. no. A-1 1 1362).

Collections 87

Fig. 45. a, ulu handle; b, lug for kettle handle; c, unidentified; d, end-bladed knife blade; e, mask appendage (?);
/ engraving tool; g, brass box; h, spoon; /, spoon, j, kettle lid; k, wedge; /, kayak keel protector or shoe (fmnh neg.
no. A-1 11361).

88 Part Four

Fig. 46. a, projectile point; b, chipped biface; c, chipped biface; d, chipped biface; e, end blade; / end blade; g,
end blade; h, end blade; /, end blade; j, end blade; k, end blade; /, end blade; m, end blade; n, end blade; o, stone
saw; p, slate blank; q, slate blank; r, slate blank (broken); s, adze blade; /, tabular ulu blade; u, skin scraper blade
(fmnh neg. no. A-1 1 1935).

Collections 89

Paugvik in Historical Context

In this final section we briefly consider the place
of Paugvik within southwestern Alaskan pre-
history and history.

Subsistence

Identified faunal elements recovered fi-om the
Paugvik settlement during the several years of ex-
cavations are summarized in Table 8, where em-
phasis is placed on the relatively numerous mam-
malian remains. The identifications of moose el-
ements are evidently tentative, based chiefly on
the size of two separate bones (see Appendix).
Moose reportedly were virtually nonexistent on
the Alaska Peninsula before the year 1900 (e.g.,
DI, 1980, p. III-65), although a rare presence in
the Naknek vicinity at the time Paugvik was oc-
cupied is of course possible. The animal cannot,
however, be considered very significant in terms
of routine subsistence.

Both birds and fish were much more fully iden-
tified following the work in 1961 and 1973, as
summarized in Table 9. Despite the lack of more
detailed identifications of bird and fish remains
from 1985, the high proportions of both salmon
and waterfowl shown in Table 9 can reasonably
be extended to work of that later year.

- Mammals

From the faunal remains collected at Paugvik (Ta-
ble 8), those considered to have been probably the
most important mammalian food remains are
summarized in Table 10. The mean live weights
given may not be absolutely accurate indications
of the amount of usable meat for each species, but

the contrasts presented in total live meat available
are so clear and the differences among the species
are so robust that there should be little doubt that
the order of mass in fact represents the order of
availability of meat for subsistence.

The total amount of beluga meat (and blubber)
obviously far exceeds that of all others. Whether
or not this was all consumed locally, the contrast
between the beluga total and that of the next rank-
ing species, caribou, is so great that it must receive
attention. Even though oil rendered from blubber
of these small toothed whales was evidently an
item of native trade in some parts of western Alas-
ka (see Zagoskin, 1967, pp. 101-102) and some
allowance for these potential trade uses may be
made, the bulk taken still is such as to place the
beluga at the top of the list of apparent mammalian
food.

The relationship between live weight of caribou
and bear and between bear and seal, with the larger
in each pair amounting to about 150% of the
smaller, is less robustly clear-cut. Nevertheless,
the possibility that bears were killed for purposes
other than food (i.e., for fur or to remove them as
nuisances around the settlement) serves to set the
bear potentially apart from the more clearly sub-
sistence species, although the presence of bony el-
ements within the houses seems to indicate that
bears were also eaten. In any event, the progression
in order of frequency of beluga, caribou, seal, or
more generally beluga, large land mammal, seal,
is unambiguously supported.

The high importance of the beluga is in accord
with the species distribution and with reports of
local informants. Bristol Bay is a year-round hab-
itat of belugas (FWS, 1985, pp. 2-14), which enter
the major»tributary rivers in spring to meet young
juvenile salmon on their way to the sea and in

Paugvik in Historical Context 9 1

Table 8. Faunal remains found in various Paugvik units.'
of individual animals.*

E = total skeletal elements, and I = minimum number

Animals

E I

Land mammals

Caribou (Rangifer tarandus)

60+

211

23 1

Bear (Ursus arctos)

Beaver {Castor canadensis)

3 +

Porcupine (Erethizon dorsatum)

Wolf (Canis lupus)

Dog {Canis cf. familiaris)

Dog or wolf {Canis sp.)

Fox ( Vulpes cf fulva)

4 2

Unidentified canid {Canis, Vulpes)

11 2

Otter {Lutra canadensis)

Muskrat (Ondatra sp.)

Moose (?) {Alces alces)

Sea mammals

Beluga {Delphinapterus leucas)

Unidentified cetacean (cf D. leucas)

5 1

Harbor seal {Phoca cf vitulina)

Walrus (Odobenus rosmarus)

Birds

1 1

Fishes

Mollusks

Macoma clam {Macoma balthica)

Mussel {Mytilus edulis)

Whelk (cf Neptunea lyrata)

Cockle {Clinocardium nuttalli)

° W = house; T = trench.

* Abstracted from information in the Appendix and from Dumond (1981).

summer and fall to pursue mature salmon up-
stream. Local native people have told of driving
belugas upstream by kayak, the boatmen slapping
the water with their paddles, to arrive at a lagoon
located near the upper tidal limit more than 30
km inland. When the tide dropped, the whales
were beached and butchered. Other local residents
report the presence of beluga skulls in the vicinity
(Dumond, 1973-1985, fieldnotes, 1973, 1974).

There is nothing in the artifact assemblage, how-
ever, that can be recognized as a specific indicator
of the harvest of belugas. Hunting techniques sim-
ilar to that mentioned above have been described
for the 19th century both from western Alaska
(Zagoskin, 1967, p. 113) and from the mouth of
the Mackenzie River in northwestern Canada. In
the latter region, once the animals were driven into
shallows they were harpooned and then speared
(McGhee, 1974; Krech, 1989, p. 63). The toggling
heads of the harpoons used, however, were re-
portedly heavier and larger (perhaps by 50%) than
those of the usual sealing harpoons (McGhee, 1 974,
pp. 39-40). There are no such implements in the

Paugvik collection, in which the delicate (and rare)
examples of toggling heads (artifact class 1) must
have been used for animals no larger than seals.
Although some of the larger slate blades of the
collection (end blades of type 1 , artifact class 1 5)
could well have armed lances used for whale killing
and butchery (cf Krech, 1989, p. 106, Figs. 5b,d,
16a), there is nothing to show them as any way
specialized for that purpose. Others of the same
type probably were used to tip both arrowheads
for land animals and harpoons for seals, although
for seals barbed dart heads of bone or ivory would
also have been used.

Birds

The Alaska Peninsula is a staging area for the mi-
gration of numerous species of migratory water-
fowl (UA, 1974, p. 46 Iff; FWS, 1985, pp. 2-10).
Although the major areas involved are located well
southwest of Paugvik, the high proportion among
bird remains of ducks and geese of various species

Part Five

Table 8. Continued.

73T

61T

Total

E I

5 1

627
2

82
14

3
1

182

6
1

1306+
41

12
7

2
1

18 +

7
1
1

11 '
1

1
1

14+

+
+

104

109+
11 +

21
6

3 +

?2
38

2
3

1 1

169

384

5
1

2
1

125 +
1

15
1

117

306

211 +

43 +

1
1

443

223

488 +

46+

268

meets expectations. The overall number of bird
elements recovered, however (Table 8), is small
enough to suggest that birds were not a major sta-
ple. The presence of some egg shells accords well
with local reports of the gathering of eggs, es-
pecially gull eggs, in the summer months (Du-
mond, 1973-1985, fieldnotes, 1973, 1974).

Fishes

Of all the expected major food resources, salmon
and other fish remains are the least well repre-
sented. Although a considerable quantity of fishing
equipment was recovered, including both spears
and net parts (see Table 2), the actual remains of
fish are not common, although salmon did provide
the major fraction of the modest sample (Table
9). One reason for this shortage must lie in pres-
ervation, especially of the relatively soft salmon
bones. A second and probably more important
reason, however, is the practice of filleting the fish
for drying or smoking, with the mass of bony parts

left at the processing point rather than taken into
the houses. Figure 5 (p. 11) shows racks of drying
salmon.

Of the remaining fishes (Table 9), the inconnu
(sheefish) is normally not found south of the Kus-
kokwim River (Morrow, 1980, p. 25), and the
identification, evidently made from a single scale,
may be in error. Other whitefish, as well as pike
and grayling, are present in the Naknek River sys-
tem and could have been taken there in open water
or, possibly, through the ice. None of these species
is so well represented as to suggest they were cru-
cial to subsistence.

•^

Shellfish

Shellfish, given the high proportion of relatively
long-lasting debris (i.e., shell) versus edible meat
and the small number of shells recovered in the
excavations, must have been relatively unimpor-
tant as a staple food, although no doubt would
have been a welcome seasonal protein supple-

Paugvik in Historical Context 93

Table 9. Skeletal elements (E) and minimum number of individual (I) birds and fishes identified from previous
Paugvik work.''

1973 Trench

1961 Trench

Animal

E I

Birds*

Loon {Gavia stellata)

Grebe {Podiceps sp.)

Cormorant (Phalacrocorax sp.)

Duck (Anatinae or Aythyinae)

1 1

Goose (Anser or Branta)

1 1

Tundra swan {Cygnns cf. columbianus)

Murre {Uria sp.)

Gull {Larus spp.)

Bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus)

1 1

Ptarmigan {Lagopus spp.)

Raven {Corvm corax)

Fishes

Bone waste

Silver salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch)

Salmon {Oncorhynchus spp.)

1 +

Scales
Salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.)
Whitefish (undetermined)
Arctic grayling (Thymallus arcticus)
Inconnu (Stenodus leucichthys)
Northern pike {Esox lucius)

1 +
1
1

1 +

" Adapted from Dumond (1981, Table 6.32).

* Also represented by various shells of unidentified species.

ment. Most common is the macoma clam, a chalky-
shelled mud clam that is found in the inlets of
upper Bristol Bay. Colonies of the second most
frequent, the common blue mussel, are present
wherever there are rocky outcrops exposed at low
tide, as at the mouth of the Naknek River.

concentrations were known only from Area 6A by
House 6, in the short trench excavated in 1961,
and in what had clearly been a pit full of them that
was recognized in the face of the bluff below the
site where it was exposed by erosion in 1975 (Du-
mond, 1981, pp. 65,67).

Vegetal Foods

The only example here is provided by rhizomes
of a fern of the family Aspleniaceae, probably wood
fern {Dtyopteris sp.). These rhizomes were recov-
ered in some quantity in 1961 and in the 1970s
(Dumond, 1981, pp. 65, 67, where they were ten-
tatively identified as the related Polystichum), and
within the pit in Area 6 A of 1985. A plant of
southeastern Alaska, Cook Inlet, and the Bristol
Bay region, the wood fern is known as a food
source; the old leafstalks on the underground stem
are dug in early spring for roasting and the young
fiddleheads in summer are eaten boiled or steamed
(UA, 1981, p. 14). The dietary importance of this
plant at Paugvik is unclear. Although found in
scattered examples throughout the site in 1985,

Conclusion

Based on ethnographic information from south-
western Alaska, salmon, systematically preserved
and stored, probably represented the single most
important staple of the Paugvik people, although
we do not have direct archaeological evidence of
such reliance. Second in importance to salmon
appears to have been beluga, followed somewhat
distantly by caribou or bear, or both, followed
even more distantly by seal. The other mammals
represented in Table 8 probably were used pri-
marily for purposes other than food, although the
situation with bear is unclear. Waterfowl were
clearly taken and were probably important but to
a much lesser degree. The importance of gathered
eggs cannot be assessed on the basis of present

Part Five

Table 10. Proportions of mammal foods probably available at Paugvik.

Min. no.

(%) animals represented''

Estimated
individual
_ live weight
(lb)

Total

live weight

taken

(lb)

Total weight
(%)

Species

Caribou
Bear
Beluga
Seal
Total

1,306 +
41

422

125 +
1,894

(68.9)
(2.2)

(22.3)

(6.6)

(100.0)

36
5

18
15

(48.6)

(6.8)

(24.3)

(20.3)

(100.0)

250
1,200
3,000

250

9,000
6,000

54,000
3,750

72,750

12.4
8.2

74.2

5.2 '
100.0

" E = skeletal elements; I = individuals.

evidence. Although wood fern was evidently a
common foodstuff, its overall importance to the
diet is unclear. Lacking from the collection are
remains of species of berries such as that locally
called blackberry {Empetrum nigrum), which is
common along the lower Naknek River. It is gath-
ered heavily by local people today and without
doubt was important in the past.

The Fur Trade

The most important fur-bearing animals at Nush-
agak at the end of the Russian period were beaver,
river or land otter, muskrat, fox, and lynx (Elliott,
1875, p. 40). Russian traders also accepted bear
and wolf pelts, however (e.g., Khlebnikov, 1976,
Appendix 4; Oswalt, 1980, p. 86). At Paugvik,
bone waste indicates (in order of abundance) in-
dividuals of fox, beaver, dog or wolf, bear, otter,
and muskrat. Confirmation is found in the pres-
ence of fur identified as beaver, bear, muskrat, and
canid (Table 2, Appendix).

This evidence supports the statement regarding
the fur animals important at Alexandrovskiy, and
suggests in the case of fox and otter that some
trapping was done close enough to the Paugvik
settlement for the animals to have been brought
home and skinned there. Trench 4 produced the
essentially complete skeletons of one fox and one
otter (recorded as feature 14) in positions indi-
cating disposal of the whole articulated animal
corpses at a location that would have been only a
short distance outside the door of House 3.

However, both bears and wolves killed for fur
alone probably would have been skinned outside
the village. If so, this implies that the bulk of the
possible wolf bones in and around the Paugvik
houses were more likely those of dogs, whereas
the presence of bear bones seems to say that at

least portions of the bear carcasses were brought
into Paugvik as meat.

Activities within the fur trade are clearly con-
firmed by finds of fur stretchers within House 6
of a size for both fox and muskrat (Table 2, item
no. 32).

Seasonality

In the sample presented here, the seasons from
spring through summer to fall are indicated by a
range of forms, including the belugas and salmon,
which are available through much of the entire
period. Birds' eggs and fern parts are associated
with spring. Winter appears to be chiefly marked
by the caribou remains, overwhelmingly those of
mature individuals carrying antlers.

The major peninsula caribou subherd calves in
spring southwest of Port Heiden. In summer the
animals scatter, but in early fall all drift northward
to winter on the coastal plain northeast of the Uga-
shik River, returning south in late February or
March. A high point in herd numbers seems to
have been reached in the mid- 1 9th century, forc-
ing the limit of their winter migration farther
northeast. Thus, as of the early 1870s, Elliott re-
ported caribou to

cross and recross the Kvichak River in large herds during

the month of September At the mouth of this stream

is one of the broadest deer-roads in the country. The
natives run along the banks of the river when reindeer
[sic] are swimming across, easily and rapidly . . . securing
in this way any number that fancy or want may dictate.
(Elliott, 1886, p. 397)

During that period, then, caribou must have been
available in the immediate Naknek vicinity much
of the time from September until March. Those
animals represented in the bone waste at Paugvik

Paugvik in Historical Context 95

Table 1 1 . Counts of potsherds from sites in south-
western Alaska."

Native

Site

pottery

Chinaware

Kijik

1,092

Kolmakovskiy Redoubt

3,480

Akulivikchuk

329

Nushagak

317

Crow Village

325

Tikchik

310

223

Paugvik

1,506

" Based on information from Oswalt and VanStone
(1967), VanStone (1968, 1970, 1972), VanStone and
Townsend (1970), and Oswalt (1980).

were probably taken locally, as suggested by the
large numbers of skeletal elements compared with
the apparent number of individual animals (Table
8, ratio of E:I), the ratio being the highest of the
four large mammal forms in Table 10. Had the
meat been hauled long distances, more boning
probably would have taken place outside the Paug-
vik settlement.

In addition to evidence from caribou remains,
fur trapping customarily took place principally in
fall and winter seasons; thus, the evidence for such
activity at Paugvik provides some confirmation of
winter occupation. The use of the site in winter is
suggested strongly by the nature of the habitations
themselves: semisubterranean structures with sub-
stantial central fireplaces.

Thus, the immediate area of the Paugvik settle-
ment probably was occupied by at least some peo-
ple all year round. However, the houses excavated
were not necessarily the living sites in all seasons.
Accounts of local people in the 1920s and 1930s
indicate the custom of moving from the perma-
nent winter house (by that time an above-ground
frame structure) into tents for summer. Although
the tents might move to several locations during
the ice-free season, they were often only a few
yards from the winter settlement. We suppose that
a comparable pattern existed during the period of
occupation at the Paugvik site.

wise confined to the older, thicker pottery variety
that was mixed with some later deposits. Given
the arrival of Russians along the southern coast
of the Alaska Peninsula less than two decades be-
fore A.D. 1 800 and the establishment of the post
at Nushagak only in 1819, the major occupation
in the excavated portion of the site probably did
not predate 1 800 and may not have begun earlier
than about 1810.

When we began our research, we expected to
find evidence of the same occupation lasting until
at least 1 900 and perhaps beyond, with some ar-
tifacts relating to the period of the development
of the commercial fishery and the presence of can-
neries in those later years. Upon completion of
our analysis, however, our conclusion differs sig-
nificantly from our expectation.

The small number of trade artifacts in the sam-
ple makes absolutely specific dating difficult, and
the period of occupation is both too late and too
short for the radiocarbon method to provide any
assistance. But the very shortage of imported trade
objects at the site now appears to have temporal
significance.

Ceramics

As discussed in Part 4, fragments of imported chi-
naware are far outnumbered by those of native
pottery. In this aspect Paugvik stands in marked
contrast to other 19th-century sites excavated in
southwestern Alaska (Table 1 1).

Of the few imported sherds from Paugvik that
can be reasonably dated on stylistic grounds or
manufacturer's identification (Table 3), some are
types that endured to the end of the 1 9th century
or beyond. But none of them so identified were
necessarily manufactured after about 1 850, and at
least one would have been made not later than
1847 (i.e.. Table 3, sherd no. 4).

Beads

Dating

Trade beads were recovered at essentially every
excavation site, the single exception being a short
and unproductive section of Trench 1 . Evidence
of times before contact with Europeans is other-

Although the precise chronology of bead types in-
troduced to Alaska is obscure, it appears that the
green-lined red variety of Comaline d' Aleppo beads
did pre-date the other varieties of that type. The
fairly substantial sample of Comaline d' Aleppo
beads from the Paugvik sites is entirely of this
earlier green-lined variety.

Part Five

Metal

By far the majority of metal objects from Paugvik
are those fashioned into aboriginal-style imple-
ments. Metal animal traps are lacking entirely, as
is common at 19th-century sites of the region,
despite efforts of the Russians to introduce such
traps for beaver (Zagoskin, 1967, p. 221; Oswalt,
1980, p. 83). Much more uncommon in the case
of Paugvik is the absence of tin cans; tin cans have
been reported from all of the comparator sites (such
as those listed in Table 1 1). The unusual shape of
two of the ulus (Table 2, item no. 62), with the
curving metal strip as handle, may indicate some
temporal category of which we are unfamiliar; cer-
tainly they are not standard trade objects of the
American period. One of the axe heads (Table 2,
item no. 44) is of a type known to have been as-
sociated with the Russian-American Company.

Glass

Bottle glass (Table 2, item no. 98) is represented
by only eight fragments, two of them retouched as
scrapers, the total less even than the very small
number recovered at Tikchik (VanStone, 1968)
and only about 10% of the glass found at Akuli-
vikchuk (VanStone, 1970). This indicates a very
limited acquisition of bottled products of any kind.
The characteristics of the 1 1 fragments of window
glass (Table 2, item no. 132) are in keeping with
a date between about 1840 and 1870.

Summary and Conclusions

We have mentioned specifically the artifact classes
that seem to us to carry rather direct temporal
implications. In Part 1 and elsewhere, we have
made additional remarks leading to a similar end.
Here we briefly summarize these and add still oth-
er circumstances that contribute to our conclu-
sions.

The Orthodox Church in Alaska holds many
recognized chapel sites in both present and former
settlements, some with structures standing (and in
use) and some with none. For instance, there are
three such Church holdings on the mainland coast
of Shelikof Strait almost directly across the pen-
insula from Paugvik, all of them at settlements
occupied in the 19th century and substantially
contemporary with Paugvik. These are at the for-
mer settlements of Katmai and Douglas, both

abandoned in 1912, and at a site on Kukak Bay,
evidently abandoned sometime before 1 900.

Examination of local Naknek-vicinity owner-
ship records both in the office of the Bristol Bay
Borough, at Naknek, and in the Bureau of Land
Management regional office in Anchorage and
queries to officials of the Orthodox Church reveal
no comparable holding in or adjacent to the area
we recognized and excavated as Paugvik but rather
only the single site of the present Orthodox relig-
ious structure, which is located on the bluff" above
the Naknek River somewhat to the west of the
center of present Naknek village, 2 km upstream
from Paugvik. When the first chapel was con-
structed in 1876 (ARC, 1733-1938, Nushagak,
Church/Clergy Registers, Sts. Peter and Paul
Church, 1876) it was at this site— one seemingly
much more convenient to modem Naknek than
to the site we explored. The church was in active
use in 1900 when photographed by a U.S. Fish
Commission party (Fig. 47), and its replacement
structure still stands.

Although Elliott (1886) described the aban-
doned village of "Paugwik" as "marked by the
outlines of its cemetery" (which seems to imply
the existence of an Orthodox burial ground), there
is no sign of any such graveyard near the village
of our excavations. The only Orthodox cemetery
in evidence in the region is that surrounding the
modem church building at the Naknek location.

The comments attributed by Larsen (1950) to
the postmaster at Naknek at the time of his visit
in 1 948 indicated that the former village site we
know as Paugvik had already been abandoned for
some 20 years in 1895. Also, the imported ma-
terial recovered at Paugvik includes nothing of the
plentiful quantity that seems clearly related at oth-
er sites to occupation after the development of the
commercial fishing industry in the region (as, for
instance, at Kijik; see VanStone & Townsend,
1970). Furthermore, although a few trade objects
in the Paugvik collection could date from the
American period (i.e., after the late 1860s), there
is nothing in that collection that must date from
the American period, whereas everything reason-
ably datable could equally well be from several
decades earlier.

Given all of the above, we accept the import of
Elliott's statement that was based on his visit of
the mid- 1870s. We conclude that the major oc-
cupation of the archaeological Paugvik site began
as early as 1 800 and that all occupation ended by
1870. Thus, it is a site representative of the Rus-
sian period alone.

Paugvik in Historical Context 97

AIbatroB$ -AlaBka-1906
Bristol Bay Diet,

*-. .

lf^\^^^^"^

vinr- 'HI

K\iK\

Fig. 47. Russian Orthodox chapel near Naknek, 1900. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service photo no. 22-FFA-2547,
U.S. National Archives.

Paugvik in the Russian Period

Some of the Russian period settlement of Paugvik
certainly has slipped down the bluff with tidal ero-
sion, which has been severe in the past. The por-
tion remaining in 1985 (Figs. 8, 9, pp. 17, 18),
however, must provide some indication of the
contemporary appearance of the village, with the
houses strung out along the bluff above the river.
There is no indication of a Russian chapel or cem-
etery at the site as it remains, and there is no
documentary evidence that would indicate any such
presence there, rather than closer to modem Nak-
nek.

With regard to another common feature of 1 9th-
century native sites in the region, the kazhim or
qasigiq, however, the situation may be different.
According to historical accounts, the Aglurmiut
were like their linguistic relatives of the Kusko-

kwim River vicinity in the use of a community
structure that served also as men's residence house
(Wrangell, 1970, pp. 17-18, 1980, pp. 65-67). This
is described as of construction similar to that of
the ordinary semisubterranean winter house, al-
though larger, entered by a tunnel entrance, and
with an especially large and deeply sunken fire-
place in the center (Elliott, 1986, pp. 385-387;
Zagoskin, 1967, p. 115). Examples of these struc-
tures, with the well-marked entrance tunnel arid
large and deep firepits, have been excavated at sites
such as Tikchik and Akulivikchuk (VanStone,
1968, figs. 1 6, 1 8; 1 970, fig. 1 1 ). We suspect strong-
ly that one such structure is represented at the
Paugvik site by the large depression located be-
tween Houses 1 and 2 (Figure 9, p. 18). This sus-
picion is suggested by its size— from surface ap-
pearance the largest house on the site— and by its
depth, which indicates the sort of central hole that

Part Five

would incorporate a deep fireplace. We decided
against excavation of this depression, however,
both because of its rather daunting dimensions and
because it is the most heavily vandalized area at
the site. The tentativeness of our conclusion is
based on evidence of recent digging in the center
of the depression. This haphazard excavation had
been so extensive as to make it actually unclear
whether the depth was really because of an original
fireplace or simply the result of vandals' digging.

Aside from this area, the houses of the site ap-
peared relatively uniform, and this uniformity was
confirmed in our excavations: all consisting of a
single room with sunken entry tunnel, comparable
to houses at sites such as Tikchik and Akulivik-
chuk (VanStone, 1968, 1970) but without the ev-
idence of storm sheds at the outer end of the en-
trances. Whether this represents a real absence or
simply our failure to recognize traces of such sheds
in the excavations is not clear.

One surprise was in the consistent evidence for
reconstructions and superimpositions of houses at
the site. Although all versions of all houses yielded
glass beads bespeaking a period of European or
American contact, there is unmistakable evidence
for at least three generations of houses during the
time the site was occupied. Seventy-five years is
considered the longest reasonable span of occu-
pation in the portion of the site we excavated; thus
about 25 years appears to be about the maximum
length of time that such a semisubterranean struc-
ture could be expected to retain its usefulness be-
fore reaching a stage of rot that would render con-
tinued use dangerous. This situation, together with
the number of house remains encountered in our
excavations that were not indicated clearly on the
surface (at least equaling the number we recog-
nized on the surface and expected to excavate),
should serve as reminders for archaeologists who
make much of village size and population esti-
mates based on nothing more than the surface
appearances of southern Alaska archaeological
sites.

Beyond the physical condition of the site, an
element that stands out as strongly characteristic
is the small number of imported goods recovered.
Although the people of the settlement were ob-
viously active in pursuing furs for the Russian
trade, the Russians apparently were not lavish in
dispensing payment in imported goods.

Although upon first arrival in the New World
the Russian fur hunters had instituted the Siberian
practice of collecting yasak from the natives (the
headtax payable in furs by each man), some years

before the establishment of the Russian-American
Company in 1 799 a change was instituted by which
natives of the Aleutian Islands and Kodiak were
organized into hunting parties under Russian su-
pervision, with the hunters being paid according
to their individual success (Gibson, 1976, p. 32n).
This procedure was not so commonly employed
in the region north of the Alaska Peninsula, al-
though a few hunting parties were organized in
somewhat this fashion (e.g., Oswalt, 1980, p. 81).
For the most part, natives were simply encouraged
to hunt, with prodding from the toyon, and their
take was purchased by barter. In this process the
Company traded European goods for furs and en-
gaged in trading furs from one region to another,
thus trading skins less desirable (to the Russians),
such as wolf, wolverine, and caribou, into regions
where they were wanted by natives. Thus they
gained beaver and otter (Oswalt, 1980, p. 80). In
any event, the result appears to have been the
introduction of very few exotic objects into the
site at Paugvik.

Relations with Neighbors

Historical accounts indicate that the Aglurmiut
first entered Bristol Bay no earlier than about a.d.
1 800, when their warlike behavior displaced pre-
vious inhabitants to the Sevemovsk settlements
of the upper Naknek River drainage and to the
Ugashik River. In seeming contradiction of this
bit of history, however, are conclusions from pre-
vious archaeological work in the Naknek region.
When information from Paugvik was confined to
results of the limited excavations of 1 96 1 and 1973
and to the short statement of Larsen (1950), it was
concluded that the Paugvik people's "material cul-
ture was substantially indistinguishable from that
of the people they displaced" (Dumond, 1981, p.
185). Since the time of that report, however, in-
formation from the latest precontact (Brooks Riv-
er Bluffs) phase of the upper Naknek region ob-
tained in three seasons of excavation by the Na-
tional Park Service (Harritt, 1 988) and the analysis
of the 1985 Paugvik collection suggest a modifi-
cation of this view.

As reported elsewhere (Dumond, 1994), be-
tween the Pavik archaeological phase of the Paug-
vik site (beginning ca. a.d. 1800) and the Brooks
River Bluffs phase of the Naknek region (a.d. 1 450-
1800), discrepancies are noteworthy both in the
form of the ordinary habitations and in the quan-

Paugvik in Historical Context 99

tity of ceramics. In the Bluffs phase the late pre-
historic houses were dominated by multiroom
structures that appear comparable, although not
identical, to native houses of Kodiak Island of the
same period. In the same phase there was a marked
decline in the use of ceramics from the immedi-
ately prior (Brooks River Camp) phase (a.d. 1 050-
1450): during the Camp phase, the number of pot-
tery sherds amounted to 64% of the total of stone
implements recovered, whereas the overall pro-
portion of sherds to stone artifacts in all Bluffs
phase sites sampled dropped to a mere 7%. This
situation is parallel to the contemporary situation
on much of the Kodiak Island group, where ce-
ramics were known but scarcely used (e.g., Jordan
& Knecht, 1988; Dumond, 1991). This situation
changed dramatically after about a.d. 1 800 with
the Pavik phase of the Paugvik site, when ceramic
fragments only slightly differing in form from those
of the Bluffs phase exceed in number artifacts of
both stone and metal (Table 8, p. 17) and where
there is no doubt that the ordinary habitation was
a single-room house entered by a sunken tunnel
or cold trap.

Although a single-room house was in use at the
major Sevemovsk site at the time it was aban-
doned in 1912 (and had been for several decades,
according to historical accounts) 1 9th-century ob-
servers contrasted it with the semisubterranean
house of Paugvik as being more nearly above
ground and more commodious and involving more
wood in its construction (Porter, 1893, p. 169;
Petroff, 1884, p. 15). The 1 9 1 2 example illustrated
by Davis (1954, Fig. 14) was essentially an above-
ground cabin covered with sod. Nevertheless, late
prehistoric multiroom houses were reported at the
edge of the same Sevemovsk site (Davis, 1954,
Map 5, Fig. 10). Comparable multiroom struc-
tures are also reported from a Bluffs-phase site
(designated 49-NAK-0 1 5) on the upper tidal por-
tion of the Naknek River, where testing by the
Bureau of Indian Affairs has confirmed impres-
sions derived from surface configuration (S. Neal
Crozier, personal communication, 1993). Similar
depressions suggest the presence of late-prehistoric
multiroom houses at a site (49-NAK-008) near
the mouth of the Naknek River, where occupation
is known to be of the Brooks River Bluffs phase,
although testing has suggested that some single-
room houses may also have been present (Du-
mond, 1981, pp. 78-81).

Thus it appears that multiroom structures were
especially characteristic of the Naknek area settle-

ments of A.D. 1450-1800, during which time the
Naknek River drainage is thought to have been
the home of a single, relatively homogeneous so-
ciety (Dumond, 1986, pp. 4-5; Harritt, 1988, pp.
101-115). It also appears that there was a change
in modal house form in the lower drainage that
coincided with the arrival of Aglurmiut people
described in documentary sources. Whether a
roughly parallel shift occurred at the same time in
the region of the Sevemovsk settlements or wheth-
er the change there was instead some result of the
enhanced Russian presence in the 1 840s and after
is unknown. Unfortunately, no sites of the precise
age of the Paugvik site have been excavated in the
upper portion of the Naknek system, and until this
can be accomplished no tmly close comparison of
Russian-period remains at the two extremes of the
Naknek River drainage are possible.

Nevertheless, locations of settlements of this
date, between 1800 and 1870, seem now to be
confined to those extreme ends of the river system.
That is, no sites of the age of archaeological Paug-
vik have been found anywhere in the area between
the mouth of the Naknek River and the tributaries
completely above the uppermost portion of Nak-
nek Lake, where the Sevemovsk settlements were
reported to be during the Russian period, and where
the Sevemovsk site is located that was tested brief-
ly by a two-man party in the Katmai Project of
1953 (Davis, 1954). Extensive work at Brooks
River, a lower tributary of Naknek Lake, resulted
in the identification of no significant occupation
in the 1 9th century. Although a site of possibly
such age was reported from a cursory examination
in 1963 (Dumond, 1981, p. 31), tests in 1984 pro-
vided clear evidence that the site in its entirety
postdates the 1912 volcanic emption (Dumond,
1988). However, at Brooks River there is a great
deal of evidence for human use in the decades
before a.d. 1 800 and for use resuming after 1912
(Dumond, 1981, 1988). Thus the suggestion made
on the basis of historical and ethnographic ac-
counts, that there was a kind of no-man's land that
separated the Aglurmiut of Paugvik and the Alii-
tiiq-speaking people of the Sevemovsk settle-
ments, appears to be confirmed by the material
evidence as we now understand it.

We conclude that the evidence from the site
known as Paugvik and dated in this work to the
period of Russian control of Alaska confirms the
historical information as it is provided in the doc-
umentary sources available (summarized in Part
1).

100

Part Five

Acknowledgments

The present authorship is joint in all respects; the
order of authors' names on the cover is alphabet-
ical. For analysis and reportage, VanStone had
primary responsibility for native organic and im-
ported industrial artifacts, and Dumond had pri-
mary responsibility for native ceramics and stone
artifacts, excavation details, feature definitions, and
distributional comparisons. Financial support for
the 1 985 excavations was provided by a grant (RO-
20977-85) from the National Endowment for the
Humanities to the University of Oregon, tendered
with an offer of additional Treasury funds that
were matched by contributions from the National
Geographic magazine, an anonymous research
foundation in Eugene, Oregon, the Field Museum
of Natural History, and the University of Oregon
Foundation. Supplemental support for mapping
and site boundary determination was provided by
a Historic Preservation Fund grant-in-aid (02-85-
900 1) from the Office of History and Archaeology,
Alaska Division of Parks and Outdoor Recreation.
In the field, the permission to excavate was gra-
ciously given by Don Rawlinson, Vice President,
Peter Pan Seafoods, Inc. We are indebted to our
crew— Ruth Blazina-Joyce, Dan Joyce, Patricia
McClenahan, and Dennis Pontius— who volun-
teered much of their service for the summer, and
to Roger Harritt, Lael Morgan, Robert Sattler, and
Robert Asher, each of whom joined us for a few

days. Vehicles were made available by John A.
Davis and Brittany Nowak, and housing was pro-
vided by John A. Davis, Jerry Holbrook, and by
late-season efforts of Richard Russell and the Alas-
ka Department of Fish and Game. We are grateful
to Tony Malone of Naknek, a professional trapper,
for identification of the hide stretchers and the
animals for which they were suitable.

In the laboratories, work was supported by the
University of Oregon and the Field Museum of
Natural History. Flotation samples were exam-
ined by Guy Prouty, and faunal fragments from
them were identified by Dr. Ruth Greenspan. Met-
als were identified by Dr. Jonathan Lederer, mam-
mal hair by Julia Hartwick, and textile material
by Nancy Rubin. Dr. Louise Jackson provided
valuable assistance in the identification and dating
of Euro-American crockery fragments. Figures 1
and 2 were drawn by Carol Steichen Dumond,
Figure 15 by Lori Grove, and Figures 31-35 by
Linnea M. Labium. The photographs are the work
of Ron Testa, former Field Museum photogra-
pher. We are especially grateful to Loran H. Rec-
chia, who field catalogued the entire collection,
repaired and restored many objects, and typed sev-
eral drafts of the manuscript. We also are grateful
to Katherine L. Amdt, who reviewed Alaska Rus-
sian Church Records and located the date of con-
struction of the first Naknek chapel.

Collections are deposited at the Oregon State
Museum of Anthropology, University of Oregon.

Paugvik in Historical Context 101

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Appendix: Fauna from Paugvik, Alaska

David S. Reese''

Paugvik village is located at the mouth of the
Naknek River in southwestern Alaska. It was
occupied in the 1 9th century until about a.d. 1 870.
Fauna was recovered by hand collection and dry
sieving through a 1 -cm mesh.

The appended catalogue provides details on the
fauna recovered from Houses 1-6 and Trenches 1
and 2. House 5 and Trench 1 produced very small
samples.

Caribou was found in all contexts, with 28 in-
dividuals. Most came from House 6(11 individ-
uals) and House 2 (six individuals).

There are two probable adult moose bones, from
House 6 and Trench 4.

Canids were found in all contexts except Houses
1 and 5, with most from House 2 (six individuals).
There are a total of 27 individuals (15 fox, seven
dog/wolf, and six fox or dog/wolf)-

Beaver remains were found in House 1 , House
2, House 3 (two individuals). House 6 (four in-
dividuals), and Trench 1 , representing nine indi-
viduals.

Bear remains were found in House 2, House 3,
House 6 (two individuals), and Trench 2, repre-
senting five individuals.

Otter bones were present in House 3, House 6,
and Trench 2, representing three individuals.

Muskrat bones were found in two areas (House
1 , Trench 2), representing two individuals. Musk-
rat hair was found in Trench 1 .

Whale bones were found in all deposits, with
four individuals from House 6 and one or two
from Trench 1, for a total of 10 or 11 individuals.

Seal remains were present in House 1, House 2,
House 3 (two individuals). House 6 (three indi-
viduals), and Trench 4, representing eight indi-
viduals.

" Department of Anthropology, Field Museum of Nat-
ural History, Chicago.

There are 210 birds bones present from 30 in-
dividuals. Most of these came from House 6(11
bones, 1 1 individuals). House 2 (six individuals),
and Trench 2 (56 individuals). There were no bird
bones in House 5, and only one bone was found
in both House 4 and Trench 1 .

Fish bones were found in all contexts except
Houses 4 and 5. There are probably no more than
12-14 individuals represented. Salmon is the most
likely form present.

There are 55 shells: 45 Macoma, five Mytilus,
four whelks, and one Clinocardium. Most of the
shells came from Houses 2 and 3.

Unmodified mammoth tusk pieces were found
in Houses 2 and 6.

All of the fauna might have been eaten, but this
is particularly likely for the caribou and rarer moose
as well as the whale, seal, birds, shells, and fish.
Over 30 of the terrestrial mammal individuals ( 1 5
fox, nine beavers, five bears, three otters) may
have been killed for their fur rather than for meat.

These same species were represented in the
smaller terrestrial vertebrate sample from the ear-
lier work at Paugvik: six caribou individuals, four
foxes, two or three other canids, two beavers, one
bear, one otter, four whales, five seals, and 27 birds
(mainly ducks and geese). The aquatic faunal com-
ponent was somewhat larger than that of the pres-
ent sample, with 37+ fish individuals and 248
shell valves (Dumond, 1981, p. 177).

The modem fauna in the Paugvik area has pre-
viously been described (Dumond, 1981, pp. 10-
11).

Catalogue of the Fauna from Paugvik
Village

Abbreviations used: F = fused, JF = just fused; L
== left; MNI = minimum number of individuals;
mt = metatarsus; R = right; UF = unfused. Alces
= moose; Canis familiaris/C. lupus — dog/wolf;

106 Appendix

Castor canadensis = beaver; cetacean = whale
(probably beluga); Lutra canadensis = otter; On-
datra = muskrat; Phoca vitulina = harbor seal (rib-
bon seal could also be present); Rangifer tarandus
= caribou; Ursus arctos = brown bear; Vulpusfulva
= fox; Clinocardium nuttalli = Nuttall's cockle;
Macoma balthica = Baltic macoma; Mytilus edulis
= mussel.

House 1

Rangifer: 7 antler fragments (7 worked), skull frag-
ment, scapula fragment (cut down tuber spinae),
2 proximal femora (2 F, 1 L, 1 R [butchered through
trochanter majus]), 3 distal femora (3 F, 2 L, 1 R,
2 MNI), proximal tibia (F, R), distal tibia (F, R),
2 pelvis acetabulum fragments (IF, L), 2 astragali
(1 L, 1 R, 1 badly worn, 2 MNI), calcaneus (F, R),
naviculocuboid, 8 carpi/tarsi/sesmoids, proximal
metacarpus, proximal metatarsus, proximal me-
tapodial fragment, distal metacarpus (F), 3 pha-
langes 1 (3 F), 2 phalanges 2 (2 F), 2 phalanges 3,
4 vertebrae, 1 4 ribs (2 MNI).

Castor. 2 mandibles (1 L, 1 R), incisors, ulna.

Ondatra: ulna.

Cetacean: 4 vertebrae, 3 vertebral centra epiph-
yses, phalanx, rib.

Phoca: pelvis.

Bird: 6 bones (1 MNI).

Fish: 1 7 vertebrae, no toothed elements

Shells (MNI): 5 Macoma, 1 Mytilus

MNI), 10 proximal tibia fragments (3 L [ 2 UF, 1
F], 2 R [2 UF], 3 fragments [1 UF]), 6 distal tibiae
(3 L [1 UF, 2 F], 3 R [3 F], 4 MNI), 2 patellae (2
MNI), 6 astragali (3 L, 3 R, 2 badly worn, probably
4 MNI), 3 calcaneus fragments (1 L [F], 1 R [bro-
ken], 2 MNI), 2 naviculocuboids (L, R), 8 carpals/
tarsals, 5 distal metapodials (5 F, no proximal
ends), 5 phalanges 1 (5 F), 1 phalanx 3, 5 vertebral
fragments, 32 ribs, 35 fragments (6 MNI).

Ursus: scapula (F, L, very large), radius shaft
(UF proximal and distal, L), radius shaft fragment,
distal radius/ulna (F, R, proximal radius probably
UF), sternum, 2 tibia shafts (2 UF, L, R), 4 carpi/
tarsi, 4 metapodials (2 UF [ 1 mt IV]), 2 vertebrae.

Vulpes: various bones (3 MNI by mandible [1
subadult, 2 adult]).

Canis: various bones (2 MNI by femur, tibia).

Canis/Vulpes: hair (1 sample).

Castor: scapula, hair (2 samples).

Cetacean: 4 teeth, scapula (R), humerus, ?pelvis
fragment, 24 metapodials/phalanges, 22 vertebral
centra, 22 vertebral epiphyses, 1 5 ribs.

Phoca: 2 distal humeri (?UF), 2 pelvis, femur
(UF distal), metapodial.

Bird: 50 bones and 1 feather (6 MNI, 4 of one
species, and one each of two other forms).

Fish: 23 vertebrae, no toothed elements.

Shells (MNI): 18 Macoma, 1 Mytilus, 1 Clino-
cardium, 2 whelks (1 fragment).

Mammoth tusk fragment.

House 3

House 2

Rangifer: 2 1 antler fragments (2 1 worked), 2 skull
fragments (1 temporal, 1 occipital), 2 mandibles
(2 adult, 2 R, 2 MNI), 14 isolated premolars/mo-
lars, atlas, 8 scapulae (8 F, 6 R, 2 L, 6 MNI), 3
proximal humerus fragments (2 UF, L, R), 8 distal
humeri (8 F, 6 R, 2 L [ 1 butchered]), 4 proximal
radii (4 F, 2 L [1 worn], 2 R), 3 distal radii (2 R
[1 UF epiphysis, 1 F], 1 L [UF epiphysis]), 2 distal
radius shafts, 5 proximal ulnae (3 R ([1 UF, 2
broken], 2 L [1 butchered, proximal]), 3 pelvis
fragments (1 acetabulum, 1 MNI), sacrum frag-
ment, 5 proximal femora ( 1 UF head, 1 UF tro-
chanter majus, 1 L F, 1 R F, 1 F head; 3 MNI), 3
distal femur fragments (1 UF, 1 F, 1 butchered, 2

Rangifer: 8 antler fragments (8 worked), atlas,
scapula fragment, 2 ulnae (F, R, butchered down
shaft; broken, L; 2 MNI), distal radius/ulna (F, L,
worn), ?ulna shaft, proximal femur (?UF, L, worn),
distal tibia (F, L), 4 carpi/tarsi, phalanx 1 (F, worn),
5 vertebrae fragments (1 caudal), 12 ribs (2 MNI).

Ursus: palate fragment, 4 metapodials, vertebra,
claw sheath, cf Ursus hair (1 sample).

Vulpes: several bones.

Canis: several bones.

Castor: several bones (2 MNI by humerus).

Lutra: several bones.

Cetacean: skull fragment, jaw fragment, atlas,
1 0 metapodials/phalanges, vertebra centra, 3 ver-
tebral epiphyses, 3 other bones.

Phoca: several bones (2 MNI by pelvis, ulna).

Bird: 1 2 bones (4 MNI by humerus, 2 species).

Appendix 107

Fish: 57 vertebrae, 1 toothed element (2 MNI).
Shells (MNI): 9 Macoma. 2 Mytilus. 1 whelk
(fragment).

House 4 (tested only)

Rangifer. 2 antler fragments (2 worked), atlas
(adult), distal radius (F), 2 ulnae (1 L, 1 R, 1 F, 1
broken adult; F has butchered radius shaft), prox-
imal tibia (UF, opened for marrow), distal tibia
(F, fresh, opened for marrow), carpus/tarsus, pha-
lanx 1 (F, worn), 4 vertebral fragments (2 UF cen-
tra), 1 1 ribs.

Canis/Vulpes: mandible (adult), scapula (no gle-
noid, young), humerus (proximal UF, distal F),
radius and ulna (articulate, but separate), distal
tibia (F), 5 vertebrae (2 MNI).

Vulpes: mandible (adult), humerus (UF proxi-
mal), radius and ulna (articulating).

Cetacean: skull fragment, jaw fragment, meta-
podial/phalanx, vertebra centra, vertebra epiph-
ysis.

Bird: 1 bone.

Shells: 1 Macoma.

House 5 (tested only, N17/E110)

Rangifer. 2 antler fragments (2 worked), distal fe-
mur (UF), vertebra (UF), rib (butchered).

Cetacean: jaw (no teeth).

Shells (MNI): 1 Macoma.

House 6 (excavated as Trench 2 and
Trench 1, E20-26)

Rangifer. 20 antler fragments (20 worked), 8 skull
fragments, 2 palate fragments ( 1 L, 1 R, 2 MNI),

4 atlantes (1 butchered, 4 MNI), 3 axes (1 butch-
ered through and behind articular surface, 1 worn),
19 mandible fragments (all adult, 7 MNI L, 6 MNI
R), 23 isolated premolars/molars, 1 8 scapula frag-
ments (7 L [7 F], 7 R [1 smaller and broken, 6 F],
8 MNI), 16 proximal humeri (11 R [4 UF, 4 F],

5 L [3 UF, 2 F], 8 MNI), 22 distal humeri (12 R
[1 UF, 10 F], 10 L [1 UF, 9 F]), humerus shaft
(young, possibly UF, R), 4 proximal radii (3 L [3
F], 1 R [F]), 6 ulnae (5 L [3 UF, 2 broken], 1 R
[UF]), 1 1 distal radii (7 L [5 UF, 2 F], 2 R [1 UF,
1 F]), distal radius shaft fragment, 39 pelvis frag-
ments with 1 8 acetabulum fragments ( 1 0 L [ 1 UF,

6 F, 3 broken], 8 R [2 UF, 5 F, 1 broken], 9 MNI),
1 1 sacrum fragments (3 + MNI), 6 proximal fem-
ora (4 R [2 UF, 2 F], 2 L [1 JF, 1 F]), proximal
femur epiphysis (head, R), 6 distal femora (3 UF,

2 MNI; 3 F, 2 MNI), 3 distal femoral epiphyses
(2 MNI), 1 small femur (all UF), proximal tibia
(1 1 R [5 UF, 4 F], 7 L [3 UF, 1 JF, 2 F, 10 MNI],
13 distal tibia fragments (8 L [1 UF, 7 F], 5 R [3
UF, 2 F], also 1 shaft and 2 epiphyses, 7 MNI), 2
patellae, 9 astragali (6 L, 3 R, 6 MNI), 8 calcani
(9 fragments, 5 L [3 UF, 2 F], 3 R [3 UF]), 4
naviculare (3 MNI), 24 carpi/tarsi, 5 proximal me-
tacarpi (3 MNI), 5 proximal metatarsi (2 very large,
4 or 5 MNI), 5 metapodial fragments, 14 distal
metapodials (13 F [1 mt], 1 broken mt), 6 pha-
langes 1 (6 F), 4 phalanges 2 (4 F), 102 vertebral
centra and 49 fragments, 165 ribs (11 MNI).

^Rangifer. phalanx 1 (UF), burnt black.

lAlces: proximal radius (very large, F, R).

Ursus: scapula (F, R), proximal humerus (F),
distal humerus epiphysis (R), 2 radii (2 all UF),
proximal ulna (F, R), proximal tibia epiphysis (L),
tibia (F, R), 2 astragali ( 1 L, 1 R), calcaneus (UF,
L), 3 carpi/tarsi, 6 metapodials (5 F), 1 phalanx 1 ,
1 phalanx 2, 2 phalanx 3, 3 phalanx 3 sheaths, 19
vertebrae (2 MNI), cf. Ursus hair (9 samples).

Canis: various bones, adult (3 MNI tibia; 2 MNI
mandible, atlas, axis), 1 upper shaft of a femur has
an incised slit (3 MNI).

Vulpes: various bones (9 MNI mandibles [2 sub-
adult, 7 adult], 3 MNI atlas, femur; 2 MNI axis,
tibia) (9 MNI).

Canis/Vulpes: hair (8 samples).

Castor, various bones (4 MNI by humerus, 2
MNI by mandible and pelvis). One individual is
very large based on a humerus and femur (4 MNI).

Lutra: scapula, femur (UP).

Cetacean: 6 teeth, 6 jaw fragments (1 looks burnt,
4 MNI), 4 scapula fragments (1 glenoid butchered,

3 MNI), femur head, 25 metapodials/phalanges,
44 vertebrae, 7 vertebral spine fragments, 67 ver-
tebral epiphyses, 29 ribs (4 MNI).

Phoca: 8 humeri and 3 epiphyses (5 MNI), 3
ulnae (3 MNI), 2 pelves, 2 femora (2 MNI), 20
metapodials/phalanges, 1 other bone (3 MNI), hair
(2 samples).

Bird: 117 bones and 13 feathers (11 MNI by
humerus).

Fish: 43 vertebrae, 7 toothed elements (3 or 4
MNI).

Shells (MNI): 8 Macoma (1 burnt), 1 whelk
(fragment).

Mammoth tusk fragment (from Trench 2 back,
N10/E20).

108 Appendix

Trench 1 (E27-36); mixed midden

Rangifer. 5 antler fragments (4 worked), 3 molar
fragments, 3 proximal humerus (3 F, 2 L, 1 R, 2
MNI), 2 distal humerus (2 F, 1 L, 1 R, 1 MNI),
proximal radius (F, R) attaches to proximal ulna
(broken), distal radius/ulna (F, R), pelvis frag-
ment, proximal femur (maybe UF, R, worn), fe-
mur head epiphysis, proximal tibia (young adult/
adult, R, broken proximal), astragalus (R), 2 cal-
caneus (1 L [F], 1 R [butchered through distal
end]), naviculocuboid, 7 carpus/tarsus, 2 proximal
metatarsus ( 1 butchered), distal metapodial (F, very
worn), phalanx 3 (very large), 10 vertebrae [1 UF
epiphysis], 18 ribs (2 MNI), hair (1 sample).

Canis: palate fragment, 2 mandibles (1 MNI),
distal humerus (F).

Canis/Vulpes: hair (2 samples).

Castor: 2 pelvis (1 L, 1 R, 1 MNI).

Ondatra: hair(l sample).

Cetacean: jaw and 5 jaw fragments (no teeth, 1
or 2 MNI), humerus head, large shaft (UF), me-
tapodial/phalanx, 5 vertebral epiphyses, 3 small
vertebrae, 2 ribs (1 or 2 MNI).

Bird: 1 bone.

Fish: 23 vertebrae, no toothed elements (1 or 2
MNI).

Shells (MNI): 2 Macoma.

Trench 4 (midden near the entrances of
Houses 2 and 3)

L), 2 proximal radii (2 F, 1 R, 1 L [butchered down
center of shaft]), 3 distal radii (1 UF, 2 F [1 butch-
ered toward distal], 3 L, 3 MNI), 9 pelvis frag-
ments (2 L, 2 R, 1 butchered fragment, 2 MNI),
4 proximal femora (2 L [1 UF trochanter majus,
1 F], 2 R [F], 3 MNI), 2 distal femora (1 UF
epiphysis, 1 F (distal, worn), 2 MNI), 2 distal tibiae
(1 R [UF], 1 L [F], 2 MNI), astragalus (R), cal-
caneus (UF, R), naviculocuboid, phalanx 1 (F), 1 3
vertebrae, 36 ribs (3 MNI).

lAlces: posterior mandible (condyle process).

Ursus: axis, 2 carpi/tarsi.

Canis/Vulpes: various bones, all adult (4 MNI
by mandibles, 2 MNI by scapula and pelvis), 1
burnt mandible, hair ( 1 sample) (4 MNI).

Vulpes (adult): skull, 2 mandibles, atlas, axis,
pelvis, sacrum, 1 astragalus, 1 calcaneus, most ver-
tebrae and ribs; missing other limbs (Animal 1,
Feature 14, N24/E65).

Lutra: complete skeleton except for 1 astragalus
and 1 calcaneus (second skeleton from Feature 14,
N24/E65).

Ondatra: mandible.

Cetacean: tooth, jaw lacking teeth, scapula, fe-
mur, 3 metapodials/phalanges, limb bone, 5 ver-
tebrae, 3 vertebral centra epiphyses.

Phoca: 2 humerus, 2 humeral epiphyses (UF),
ulna (UF, L), pelvis, metapodial.

Bird: 32 bones (6 MNI; 2 each of 2 species).

Fish: largest sample 41 vertebrae (4 MNI by
skull bones).

Shells: 1 Macoma, 1 Mytilns.

Rangifer: 3 antler fragments (3 worked), 2 man-
dible fragments (2 L, 2 MNI), atlas, scapula (F,

Appendix 109

A Selected Listing of Other fleidiana: Anthropology 1 itles Available

I Ethnographic Collect! - Sakhalin

iropolog:^ ■' o. 8, l')88. 67 pages, 3;) iilus

lidii Trade Ornaments in the Colle».iicii)a oi i leid Museum ui
Fieldiana: Anthropology, n.s., no. 13, 1989. 40 pages, 32 illu:

Material Culture of the Blackfoot (Blood) Indians of Southern Alberta,
n.s., no. 19, 1992. 80 pages, 53 illus.

. ; ; ,

Publication 13SJ

PublicatioD 1404, $il.00

Publication 1439, $19.00

Material Cultureof the ChilcotinAthanaskansofWest Central Bri.'ish v'"nlnmhi:i Rv l.ir
Fieldiana: Anthropology '■'■ pages, 25 ilhn

Fui)UCJJK>!l 14 »(^-, ^iZ.Ut)

less and Warfare Among the Kayenta Anasazi of the Thirteenth Century A.D. By Jonathan Haas and
Winifred Creamer. Fit'l/iiono- 4>ith>-nnnJn\y\: n.s no. 71 iQQ'^ ?M ngp'^'i 74 illus.

Publication 1450, $32.00

oUection of Copper Inuit Material Culture. By James W . VanStone. Fieldian c
'^94. 71 pages, 44 illus.

Publication ir^ -:' 7 00

chaeological Research at Tumatumani, Juii, Peru. By Charles Stanish and Lee Steadman, . : v
.:ontribution by Matthew T. Seddon. Fieldiana: Anthropology, n.s., no. 23, 1994. 1 1 1 pages, 17o p u-,

Publication 1457, $23.00

rder by publication number and/or ask for a free copy of our price lis

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Full text of "Paugvik : a nineteenth-century native village on Bristol Bay, Alaska"

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