This SGER award will support the proposing preliminary testing on two archaeological sites in the Norton Sound area of Alaska. The two sites are thought to shed light on the "Norton" archaeological culture, believed to be ancestral Yup'ik (Eskimo). River erosion and subsistence digging increasingly threaten the chosen sites and the preliminary investigations being proposed are critical in determining if they can shed light on the Norton culture. More extensive archaeological investigations involving local communities, who have expressed a great interest in their pre-history, will be planned on the basis of the current field investigations
