Old Dirt - New Thoughts

Since we have ancient masks as a recent topic on this blog, I decided to continue my Aniakchak field reports by highlighting one of this season’s more spectacular finds - a portion of a miniature ivory mask. It came from one of the dense midden deposits (Strat Layer VII) eroding out of the headlands overlooking Aniakchak Bay. We have not dated this deposit directly, but we believe it belongs to the 1300 BP occupation.

I found this object in the last hours of my last day on the site, so it was a very gratifying way to end my time at Aniakchak. The artifact is broken making it a little difficult to say exactly what it represents. I believe it is a carving of a face (some say an owl’s face) broken just below the nose. It seems like you can even discern faintly scratched eyebrows. It has a hole drilled through from front to back at the top of the head. This hole would have allowed the object to be suspended like a pendant. The hole also would enable one to tie it to or otherwise affix it to another object (possibly a doll or figurine).

Jeanne Schaaf, a National Park Service archaeologist working with us in Aniakchak, thinks this object may have been a labret. Neither of us, though, can remember seeing any similar labrets in any archaeological reports for the region. In fact, this object along with the other carved ivory pieces from Aniakchak are largely unique for the Southwest Alaskan archaeological record. Aniakchak’s occupants, at least at 1300 BP, seem to have had an artistic tradition that differed from their contemporaries in the eastern Aleutians to their west and the Kodiak Archipelago to their east. When asking the question “Who lived in Aniakchak Bay 1300 years ago?”, analysis of the artwork may ultimately provide one of the clearest answers.