Yesterday we had one of our more exciting days, as we got to join one of the archeological crews at Point Barrow, the very tip of Barrow between the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. The dig began in 1998 when (around) 800 year old human remains were discovered. It was then realized that Point Barrow provided a burial site that contained remains that could be tested and traced to the local community. The two groups that were at the dig had two different agendas: 1) The archeologists are trying to recover and move the burial remains in town before erosions wipes them all out to sea, and 2) the geneticists want to gather samples from ribs that can allow them to test and trace DNA. (Did I say this yesterday? Is anyone actually reading this, or are you just looking at the pictures? Blink once if you are reading this ; ) )
Anyway- getting to the good stuff- we got to bundle up in ski equipment (long underwear, sweaters, fleeces, face masks, gloves, etc) and were also told to grab gigantic red jackets
because apparently the point would be 'colder than we could imagine'. (Having skied in northern VT, I find this hard to believe). However, wee got lucky and it wasn't that windy, which minimized the cold. (I still wore long underwear, a fleece shirt, a fleece a jacket, and the big red jacket as well as a face mask/ hat.) So we all piled on to 4 wheelers, accompanied by two Bear Guards to protect us from polar bears. After an awesome caravan ride out to the point, we began digging and labeling anything we found. Janet, Judy, Molly and I found a lot of 'faunal remains' (which means non-human remains) mostly seal and caribou bones. Nothing archeologically significant. But the archeologists uncovered a HUMAN SKULL of a 6-8 year old child underneath some sort of animal pelt. We weren't allowed to take
pictures of any of the human remains but we got to watch them carefully brush things off with little brushes, just like they would on crime tv like "Bones" or maybe Jurassic Park. AWESOME!
There was also a group of local high school students who work at the dig site during the summer months. We had lunch with them in the tent and chatted about what teenage life is like in Barrow, Alaska. Pretty similar to the lives of Massachusetts teens actually- similar music, (on their ipods they were listening to Disturbed and Fallout Boy) similar taste in reading, (one of the girls walked me through the whole plot of the 4th Twilight book, Breaking Dawn- they even nicknamed the child skeleton remains after a character from the book) and similar past times. (When asked what the biggest downside of living in Barrow was, one of them answered, 'there is no mall'.) However, they are lucky to have a whole world of experiences that the environment does not provide for the teens in Massachusetts. From a young age, most children have their own 4 wheelers that they will use to roam around town and over the beach and tundra landscape. Additionally, most kids get to hunt in some capacity. The kids we talked to had all taken part in a variety of hunts- duck hunts, caribou, seal, and of course the infamous whale. Only men and boys are allowed to participate in whale hunts however, and I also learned that a man can only be a whaling captain if he is married. Super interesting social systems, I could do a lot more research on the gender roles and social constructions of the Inupiat! Fascinating!
One highlight for me was my ride around the perimeter with one of the Bear Guards as he made his patrol. He pointed out an artic fox that had been hunted for it's tale (sad), a giant pile of whale bones that generally attracts the polar bears (cool!) a few seals bopping around in the water (cute!!!) and a marked grave site from about 200 years ago. Finally, after about 8 hours at the site and bathroom breaks in a tent on a small bucket filled with Pine Sol, we headed back into town to pepare for our community talk at the library.
Most of our audience was from BASC but they had lots of great questions and gave us a lot of good ideas for how to help teenagers think about climate change. Over all, a busy and invigorating day!!!!
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