Currently 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. Since the program’s launch in 2014, we have funded over 100 research projects.
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Sitkalidak Archaeological Youth Camp 2025
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.