This project provides funding for the completion of the final report of a long-term archaeological project at Wales, Alaska, and will support two students as they assist in preparing the data and contents of the monograph for submission for publication, and ultimate curation of the cultural materials in the collection. The Wales project represents almost two decades of research on an important Alaskan site that represents a complexity of social group interaction in the region that both complements and complicates previous understandings of Bering Strait prehistory. In addition, the project will engage the Wales community in the preparation of the monograph, including traditional community knowledge (written by members of the Wales community) about the archaeological sites investigated. The completion of this project will see not only the publication of results but the return of the collections from this project to public curation and, eventually, the return of part of this collection to the Seward Peninsula/Bering Strait region where it can become a focus for local community awareness and education as well as a source of interpretation for non-indigenous residents and visitors to the area.
In the final analyses of project results that are presented fully in the final project report, it is clear that late prehistoric material culture of the Wales locality sites reflects at least a degree of asymmetry of form and content of artifact types that was postulated for traits in the existing collections and data from the sites, during the latter stages of planning for the project. The overall implications of the asymmetry support suggestions that the interactions between the occupants of Kurigitavik Mound (TEL-79) and the Hillside site (TEL-25) during the period from ca. 1000 to 500 years ago were frequent and may have been relatively intense by comparison with those of the occupants of the HIllside site and with their later interactions with the occupants of the Beach site (TEL-26) from ca. 500 years ago to the 19th century. Early historic images of houses from both sites show evidence of this in the form of house construction methods employing the use of horizontal log exterior walls can be seen in both sites. A secondary, important focus of the project has been evaluating the cultural identities of the early major occupations of the sites, with a particular concentration on their possibile affinities with cultures of the Chukotka coast. The subject was addressed by Collins (e.g., 1940, 1964) and subsequently by Yama'ura (e.g., 1984); both investigators arrived at similar conclusions that the material culture represented at Kurigitavik Mound appeared to reflects some combination of Punuk and Thule cultural attributes. A review of this possibilitiy in light of the new data generated by the present project points to Siberian Punuk affinities for the initial major occupation of Kurigitavik, and it also suggests that there is variation among researchers concerning the breadth and depth of Punukian material cultural attributes. It would now now doubt be a good time to conduct a collective review of how distinctions are made between Punuk and Thule cultures in the region, In any case, the current evidence suggests that traces of Punukian characteriistics are manifest at the Hillside site, the earliest of the sites in the Wales locality, and that much more definite and clear affinities are manifest at Kurigitavik Mound prior to 500 years ago. This raises a provocative consideration that the early occupants of the HIllside had significant interactions with Punuk cultural centers on the western side of Bering Strait, and that the initial occupation of Kurigitavik Mound was accomodated by Hillside people who very possibily had blood relations with Siberian groups during their early presence in the locality , ca. 1200 years ago. This scenario is consistent with suggestions by Krupnik concerning population growth among Siberian Punuk people, ca. 600 years ago (ca. AD 1350), toward the latter end of their tenure in the region (Harritt 1995; Krupnik 1983). In this regard, colonization of the nearby Seward Peninsula foreland at Wales would no doubt appear attractive, especially if the group already in residence were family members or, minimally, trading partners. In any case, the early residents of Kurigitavik are considered by the PI and author of the final report to have been bearers of the major elements of Punuk culture, based on the affinities of the houses, harpoon heads, arrow heads and pottery. Although all of the sites investigated during the present projects are badly damaged by erosion, construction and artifact mining, intact archaeological remians still exist, although in most cases surface evidence of their presence is obscured as a result fo the activities just mentioned. And, although the damage that has occurred has no doubt diminished the potential for the content of the sites to provide new insights into the lives of the prehistoric occupants, there are nevertheless still possibilities for gaining new insights. The present project has demonstrated this, as it has generated considerable new data from the main sites in the Wales and Tin City localities. And the new data that have been obtained with also support a variety of new evalutatons of the late prehistory of the Bering Strait region, and beyond.
