IN Dynamics of Northern Societies: Proceedings of the SILA/NABO Conference on Arctic and North Atlantic Archaeology, Copenhagen, May 10th -14th, 2004, edited by Jette Arneborg and Bjarne Grønnow, pp. 103-119, National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen. Ipiutak Remains Mysterious: A Focal Place Still Out of Focus Owen K. Mason 1 INTRODUCTION large town? When was itoccupied? What was its subsistence base? Why was it abandoned? Was it ruled by battle hardened chiefs and/or shamans? Who were Sixty-five years following its discovery in 1939, Ipiutak, at their ancestors?2The imagination of the archaeologist, Point Hope, Alaska (Fig. 1), remains one of the most ideally, should aspire to the social and mythic intriguing places in the western arctic. Situated on a low landscapes that radiated beyond the circumscribed real gravel spit, 2 to 5 m above the Chukchi Sea, the Ipiutak estate of the archaeological site (Renfrew and Cherry site circumscribes an extensive settlement area across 1986; Tilley 1994) – in practice, the Ipiutak data are five beach ridges (E to A) that apparently was associated insufficient for such flights of fancy. with > 150 graves up to several km away (Larsen and The Ipiutak e t h n o s spanned hundreds of km, Rainey 1948). By 1941, archaeologists excavated 12% of across the Brooks Range (Reanier 1992) and into its mapped habitations, cataloged and archived >10,000 northern Norton Sound, into Golovnin Bay (Mason 2000; artifacts. Much remains unknown or equivocal about the Mason et al. n.d.). Coastal locales were very small history and practices of Ipiutak’s inhabitants: Was it a settlements of 50 people, including several houses; each had a larger community Fig. 1. Aerial Photograph of Tikigaq (Point Hope) spit, the location of the principal archaeological sites. The present vilage of Point Hope is indicated by the circle. The arrows indicate the splaying out of the spit in the last 1000 years, the age of the ridge underlying the Jabbertown site. The dashed squares mark the detailed maps in Figures 2a and 2b, which delineate cemetery clusters and the locations of 1 4C ages, archaeological and geological. 1. Geoarch Alaska , P.O. Box 91554, Anchorage, AK 99509; geoa r [email protected] 103 structure, as at Cape Krusenstern or Deering (Clark 1977; Anderson 1984; Gerlach 1989; Reanier (Larsen and Rainey 1948; Anderson 1984:88 -89; 1992) with a large ceremonial structure, serving as Anderson 1986; Reanier et al. 1998; Mason 1998; a regional gathering locale, as at Feniak Lake (Hall Larsen 2001). Interior sites were only single houses 1974). Caribou kill or processing sites are rare; t w o or encampments on lake margins are well documented: Anaktuvuk Pass (Mills et al. Fig. 2(a). Map of Ipuitak settlement site and (b) east- ern part of Tikigaq spit. Radiocarbon ages are indicat- ed within boxes, calibrated age ranges f o l o w labora- tory numbers (Tables 1 and 2). Burial clusters defined intuitively by the author are outlined, these differ slightly from Newton (2002:4). Burials with special significance are noted. Ridges are listed as Larsen and Rainey 1948 defined. In Fig. 2(b), the ages from the BIA (Table 2) are presented within bold brackets. 104 Beach Ridge Houses Tested by Larsen & Total Dating: Calibrated Year (2s) 1 4 x t h Landward Rainey Excavated Context, C yr BP (Lab. No.) E= 28t h 23, 45-48, 50 6 House 50, antler wedge, 1490±70 BP AD 430-690 (K-2745) D=27t h 1, 5, 8, 12, 15, 19, 26-27, 32- 23 House 32, worked antler AD 640-871 44, 68, 71, 1320 ±70 BP (K-2743) House 43, worked antler AD 584-874 1290 ±55 BP (K-2744) C=26t h 2-4,6, 7, 9,10, 20-22, 25, 49, 29 House 3, wood AD 608-893 51-59, 61- 63, 65-67, 69, 72 1300±70 BP (K-2742) House 69, wood sled runner AD 540-770 1390 ±70 BP (K-2746) t h B=25 11, 13, 14, 16-18, 28-31, 49, 13 60, 64, 70, A= 24t h 0 Organic horizon 30 cm bs, wood 1370 ±50 BP (Beta-66262) AD 598-775 1520 ±50 BP (Beta-66263) AD 424-644 Table 1. Radiocarbon Ages from the Ipiutak settlement, compiled from Larsen and Rainey (1948: 188-241). Radiocarbon samples from Gal 1982 and Sutcliffe 1994, written communication. House 24, a Near Ipiutak house was outside the immediate Ipiutak site area, about 1.5 km east. 1999) and the 58 “Norton -Ipiutak” hearths and two are attached to two blocks of permafrost-bound house floors within Band 2 at Onion Portage silt, in the north and in the south. The beach ridge (Anderson 1988:121 -122). sequence across Point Hope was first considered a proxy for short term eustatic (ice-volume driven) sea level fluctuations (Moore 1960), but it predominantly represents variability in storm TIKIGAQ SPIT energies and sediment supplied by east to west bluff erosion and/or onshore trans-port of shelf gravels (Moore 1966; Mason 1990; Maso n and Jordan 1993, 2002). Tikigaq spit is, metaphorically, an index finger, a digit gesturing into the Chukchi Sea, issuing from Lisburne Peninsula, at the farthest northwest of Alaska (Fig. 1). The spit remained ice-locked until PUBLICITYIS DESTINY well into the summer, as late as early July (U. S. Coast Pilot 1938:443), a circumstance that benefits bearded seal and walrus and the humans that live by their flesh. The point “plunge[s] deep into the sea mammals path” (Lowenstein 1993:21; cf. Fay The scale of the Ipiutak site – hundreds of house 1982). The spit was conceived as a whale -like being depressions – dwarfed all previous conceptions of rising from the sea (Lowenstein 1992:xxviii, 8) – and life in the arctic. Many first impressions, generated the identity of 19t h century Tikigaq residents with the during the first publicity barrage (T i m e 1941; Rainey whale was nearly metaphysical since many lived 1941, 1942), persist in the public mind, especially in within shelters inlaid with whale manibles and were the Point Hope community. By 1940, after 550 houses buried in precincts wit h towering mandibles. The were mapped Rainey (1942:319) concluded several shape of the Tikigaq spit bears close resemblance thousand people had occupied the settlement at to a harpoon and a raven’s bill (Lowenstein 1993:21). one time. The rationale for reconstructing a single To its Inupiaq dwellers, Tikigaq is not “real” land, it large village was two-fold: no overlapping houses is a being that changes and grows (Lowenstein were mapped and the depth of midden was consid- 1993:23ff). ered “insignificant” (Rainey 1941:319). A rough cal- culation suggested that 4000 or 5000 people lived at To the geomorphologist, Tikigaq is a Ipiutak – more than the towns of Fairbanks or complex twin spit that encloses several lagoons (th e Juneau in 1940! A poetic vista beckoned: a well - largest, the Marryat Inlet), at the mouth of a small appointed “ t o w n ” with broad “avenues ... the most river, the Kukpuk (Kindle 1909; Shepard and highly developed arctic culture yet found” (Rainey Wanless 1971; Mason 1990). To its east, the low but 1942:319). National publicity followed the Ipiutak rugged cliffs of the Lisburne Peninsula anchor the discovery, with a brief notice “of a lost arctic city” spit to the main land. The gravel barriers of the spit in Time magazine (1941), followed by a lengthy article in The National Geographic Magazine (Rainey 105 and seal remains, a minor amount of caribou…”) while the other two “proved more fruitful, yielding a variety of worked stone…a few pieces of birch bark and some decorated ivory pieces” (Hosley 1942). In the latter treatment, modern whaling at 1967:15). In 1975, Andrews et al. (1977:26ff) shovel Point Hope was an undercurrent, witness the tested (50 cm2) ten houses to establish the reliability monograph title: Ipiutak and the Arctic Whale of aerial photography as a survey tool; the collec- Hunting Culture w h i c h can be read as Ipi utak within tion includes mostly lithic debitage. One house at a whale hunting culture. “ N o definite conclusion” the eroding margin of the youngest Ipiutak ridge, established whether a genetic link existed tested in 1997 by Anne Jensen (2004, pers. comm.), between Ipiutak and the Inupiaq residents at Point contained a roughly decorated ivory piece (not in Hope (Rainey 1942:322) – as still debated by the typical Ipiutak canon) and the more diagnostic physical anthropologists (Utermohle 1988). stone tools. How far do the boundaries of the Ipiutak EXTENTOF TESTING AND SAMPLING site extend? According with spit formation direction (cf. Figure 1), no Ipiutak remains are on ridges to the south. Several surveys (Larsen and Rainey 1948; Hosley 1967; and Hall 1990) have emphasized different phenomena along >3 km of The maps produced by Larsen and Rainey (1948: the eroding margin of Marryat Inlet, the oldest Figs. 2, 3) inaccurately demarcate Ipiutak houses composite northern ridge of the spit. In 1940, within an outline that does not conform to the con- Larsen and Rainey (1948:166) mapped thirty figuration of the spit. GIS-based cartography should middens with artifactual debris, interpolated with be employed to rectify the Ipiutak map wit h avail- burials, and did not observe discrete houses. By able 1:1800 aerial photographs from 1982, and the contrast, Hosley (1967:16) emphasized several 1940, 1967 and 1977 surveyor produced maps. New walrus bone scatters as kill sites due to the photo-interpretation and ground-truthing may pro- presence of flake debitage consistent with carcass duce evidence of additional houses; site visibility processing.