WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Two leaded bronze artifacts found in northwestern Alaska are the first evidence that metal from Asia reached prehistoric North America prior to contact with Europeans, according to new Purdue University research. “This is not a surprise based on oral history and other archaeological finds, and it was just a matter of […]
Ships with no humans aboard have long ridden the seas, often floating with supernatural stories of being piloted by dead crew members or becoming visible to sailors and then vanishing. Alaska has its own ghost ship. Workers for the Hudson Bay Company abandoned the S.S. Baychimo just offshore of Wainwright 85 years ago. Sea ice […]
At their May 7th meeting, the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly voted to donate nine collections of artifacts to the Alutiiq Museum. The objects, mostly stone tools documenting Native history, came from borough lands on the coasts of Afognak Island, Chiniak Bay, Womens Bay, and Woody Island. They were recovered during archaeological research, and have been […]
At the edge of a spruce forest in Interior Alaska, archaeologists have unearthed bone pendants that might be the first examples of artwork in northern North America. During the last two summers, teams led by UAF’s Ben Potter have expanded the breadth of the Mead Site, a white spruce bench that overlooks Shaw Creek Flats […]
Skiing across the raw, open landscape of the Seward Peninsula a few weeks ago, my friends and I dreamed of getting out of a big wind and into the tub at Serpentine Hot Springs. Though none of us had been there, we all recognized the Serpentine valley by black tors guarding the surrounding hillsides. With […]
WRANGELL MOUNTAINS: Over 14,000 years ago, much of North America was covered in ice, starting at the Alaska Range, and moving down all the way to what are now the cities of Chicago and New York. The ice was very thick — miles thick. Then, it abruptly melted over much of the northern hemisphere. Except in […]