Previously Funded Projects

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.

3 projects in Community archaeology All Projects
  • 2024-25 | |
    • Ben Fitzhugh, Faculty
    • Hollis Miller, Co-PI

    Sitkalidak Archaeological Youth Camp 2025

    Ben Fitzhugh on site Abstract: This project supports student participation in a third season of Indigenous archaeology at the Nuniaq youth culture camp for Sugpiaq* teens on Sitkalidak Island, Kodiak, Alaska in July 2025. This project represents an investment in community-based, interdisciplinary research and capacity building in Old Harbor, Alaska. The grant covers the logistic expenses for 7 undergrad and grad volunteers to participate in the 3.5-week project. It will support the career development of early career UW alumnus (Hollis Miller), a UW third-year graduate student formulating a dissertation plan around the project (Michelle Henry), an MA student and five undergrads. It will contribute additional data for adjunct QRC member Hollis Miller’s ongoing analyses of the contact era Ing’yuq site and deepen ongoing commitments of Miller and Fitzhugh in community-engaged research. The 2025 project involves traveling to the village of Old Harbor on the Kodiak Archipelago, preparing gear and setting up field camp in a remote location ten miles from the village. There the team will establish camp and re-open the excavation at the Ing’yuq Site, an ancestral village dating from the centuries just before and decades just after Russian colonization of the archipelago. Once open, the team will be instructed in the excavation and recording protocols and prepare to receive up to 10 teens from Old Harbor who will join us for 5 days discovering the archaeological history and former belongings of their ancestors. A constellation of factors conspired to limit this year’s camp to the smaller number of youth coming out to the site, so we are facilitating a two day “pre-camp” back in Old Harbor, the weekend before the field camp, for the larger group of kids (50+ in past years) to engage with elders in storytelling documentation, Suqpiaq crafting, and traditional food preparations. At the 5-day field camp, students and campers alike will be engaged in additional learning activities related to traditional Sugpiaq culture including Alutiiq Dancing, traditional plant lore, subsistence practices and storytelling. After Nuniaq campers leave the site, the university crew will spend another week wrapping up the excavation, completing documentation and refilling the excavation before decamping to Old Harbor to store our gear, present results, and depart for home in early August. As the community is planning a new location for future Nuniaq Camps, we are hoping to complete our excavations at Ing’yuq site this season to be able to publish the results and prepare to support the camp in the new location in the future. Through all this, we continue to partner with the Alutiiq Tribe of Old Harbor, the Old Harbor Native Corporation (landowners of the site) and the Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository in Kodiak.

    *Sugpiaq and Alutiiq are equivalent appellations for the Alaska Native people of Kodiak and adjacent coasts of southern Alaska. Sugpiaq is the autonym for “we people” derived from their language Sug’stun and currently advocated by cultural intellectuals. “Alutiiq” is a term more community members have come to identify with for historic reasons over the past century.

    Report: pending

  • 2023-24 | |
    • Ben Fitzhugh, Faculty

    Sitkalidak Archaeological Youth Camp 2024

    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.

    Report: pending

  • 2022-23 | |
    • Hollis Miller, Student
    • Ben Fitzhugh, Faculty

    Sitkalidak Archaeological Youth Camp 2023

    Abstract: This proposal seeks QRC support to cover otherwise unfunded expenses to carry out an Indigenous archaeology youth camp with Sugpiaq teens on Kodiak, Alaska’s Sitkalidak Island in July 2023. This project represents an investment in community-based, interdisciplinary research and capacity building in Old Harbor, Alaska. It will support the career development of QRC Affiliate Member, Hollis Miller, and the ongoing commitments of QRC Member Ben Fitzhugh to strengthen community engaged research. Requested funding will also help two UW and two SUNY-Cortland undergraduate students to participate in the project. All four students have already participated in archaeological and zooarchaeological lab analyses of materials collected from the Ing’yuq archaeological site that will be the focus of the 2023 Camp, and they will now gain field experience at the same site.

    Report: View

Back to Top