The three-thousand-year-old Old Whaling culture is enigmatic, known only from the type site at Cape Krusenstern, Alaska. Mystery aside, Old Whaling is very important in the development of Eskimo culture because its members are believed to have been the first people to hunt large baleen whales in the Bering Strait region. The existence of Old Whaling culture in Chukotka has been hypothesized, but until now has not been demonstrated. This project will investigate the Old Whaling culture in Chukotka by excavating a recently discovered archaeological site near the village of Nunligran. The project is will include archaeologists from the Institute of Heritage in Moscow (Sergey Gusev and Igor Makarov) and the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography - Kunstkamera in St. Petersburg (Dmitri Gerasimov) who will work in close collaboration with archaeologists (Daniel Odess and Caroline Funk, University of Alaska Fairbanks), a zooarchaeologist (Erica Hill, University of Alaska Southeast), and a graduate student (Sarah Meitl, University of Alaska Fairbanks). The project will also include a Yup'ik high school student who has been working with the PI in the field and the laboratory for three years, as well as students and other community members from Nunligran. Together the research team will excavate the site with the goal of answering the following questions: What is the nature of the Old Whaling occupation at Nunligran, and how is it related to the Old Whaling occupation at Cape Krusenstern? What evidence is there for cultural ties across Bering Strait around 3000 years ago? How did people at the site make a living, and did the people who lived there hunt whales? How is the shift to whaling, as a subsistence activity, reflected more broadly in social and community organization and changes in land use? The project is intended to foster international collaboration and community involvement in research important to people on both sides of Bering Strait.
