QRC members lead and participate in a wide range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary research projects from the study of past earth climates and glaciations to shifts in the geographic distributions and evolution of vegetation and faunal communities, to the evolution and dispersals of the genus Homo and the increasing scales of human modification of earth environments through the Holocene. QRC provides a venue for meeting and collaborating with scholars across Quaternary disciplines. We are also fortunate to be able to provide seed funding and small grants for member research projects. We are especially happy to support grad student and junior scholar research activities, much of which leads to larger, external funding from agencies like the National Science Foundation.
Abstract: This project engages Native youth from Old Harbor Alaska in the excavation of an ancestral village occupied prior to, through and for several decades after the Russian conquest of the Kodiak Archipelago between 1784 and 1790. The Ing’yuq site (KOD 114) is an archaeological village on Sitkalidak Island in the southeast portion of Kodiak. Research at the site since 2019 have mapped the site, tested several house structures, and excavated portions of one of the houses with a dense shell midden and stratified occupation layers from the mid 17th century to the early 19th century. While we have included youth interns in our work for several years, in 2023, we formally partnered with the Alutiiq Tribe of Old Harbor and the Old Harbor Native Corporation to host their annual Nuniaq Youth Culture Camp near the ongoing excavations and to include the kids (ages 9-17) in the excavation activities. That was very successful and we promised to return in 2024 to continue the process. Limited funds were secured through a separate grant (an international comparative project on storytelling and oral history use in revitalizing traditional knowledge for climate adaptation in the present), we were not able to secure external funding for one UW graduate student and six undergraduate volunteers to participate and support the project as crew and teachers of the kids working on the site. This grant reduces their financial burden and continues the tradition of bringing UW students and researchers together with Old Harbor youth and Elders in collaborative education, introducing archaeological heritage and practice into the context of dancing, crafting, subsistence training and storytelling by Elders and other respected leaders of the community. This project represents an investment in community-based, interdisciplinary research and capacity-building in Old Harbor, Alaska. It will support the career development of one first-year graduate student in Anthropology (Michelle Henry) and at least six UW undergrads. It will contribute additional data for QRC affiliate Hollis Miller’s ongoing analyses of the contact era Ing’yuq site and deepen ongoing commitments of Miller and Fitzhugh in community-engaged research on Kodiak.