Excavating an Ancient Men's House at the Qitchauvik Site, Alaska

The Qitchauvik site, on the shore of Golovin Lagoon in northwestern Alaska, held a men's house, or qarigi, used from about A.D. 550 to 750. Archaeologists recognise a qarigi by its large size and by how few tools it holds for work traditionally done by women, such as sewing and cooking. Qarigi appear in northwestern Alaska as communities became more settled and populous, with more elaborate burials and with warfare — and offered communal space to talk through and solve social and environmental problems together.

A rich setting

• Wood. The Golovin area is one of the few places on the Seward Peninsula where trees grow down to sea level, so people could easily gather spruce wood, roots, bark and needles. Driftwood, carried from interior Alaska by the Yukon River, littered the beaches, burned for light and heat and was used for houses and household goods.
• Fish and sea mammals. Near the mouth of a small river, the site overlooked shallow waters that drew beluga whales migrating in spring and fall. Salmon and trout spawned there each year — artifacts show people both speared and netted them — and seals were available.
• Marsh and hills. Storms sometimes piled sand and gravel into berms that blocked the river, which then changed course; the marshes left in old channels drew ducks and geese, and people hunted beaver there and caribou on the nearby hills.

What a qarigi was

European explorers of the 18th and 19th centuries described qarigi as communal men's buildings, usually of logs banked with earth around a large central hearth; visitors often stayed in them because they were bigger than homes.

• They sheltered big jobs — building and repairing hunting and travel gear, recorded as men's work — where young men learned from older ones and newcomers from locals, binding the men of the community together.
• Women and children were not barred, but most women's work was done at home, and food was usually cooked elsewhere and brought in. In some communities men slept in the qarigi.
• The whole community gathered there for discussions and celebrations.

The building

The qarigi stood on Beach Ridge #7, built by strong, frequent storms over about 400 years between A.D. 100 and 500. After about 500 the climate grew milder and storms began building a new ridge closer to the sea; the qarigi was built after 550, in this calmer time. There are no houses on Ridge #7, but fourteen house pits on a ridge just inland may belong to the families who built and used it.

• Shape and size: rectangular, at least 30 feet long and 18 feet wide, of timber, dug partly into the ground and covered with soil.
• Roof: upright posts held a frame of cross-beams — one at least 9 feet long — from which planks sloped down to the timber walls, so the room was highest in the centre.
• Floor: two levels — benches round the walls, and a step down to the hearth in the middle, on a raised platform about 6 inches high and 20 inches square. Little sign of cooking or eating around it fits accounts of men's houses: the fire was for heat, and perhaps light. Pieces of stone lamps were found too.

What they found

• Stone tools were the most common finds, in twelve kinds of stone, among them chert, basalt, slate, obsidian and schist — a sign that the people travelled widely, had wide social ties, or both. Tracing the stone's sources could map those networks.
• Many small flakes from resharpening arrowheads, spear points and knives show that sharpening was the main stone-working job; slate points and knives were ground sharp. Some flakes were used as cutting tools, their edges nicked from cutting hard materials such as bone, antler, ivory or wood.
• More than 150 wooden artifacts, mostly spruce — parts of boats and sleds, kayak paddles, knife handles and fire-drill hearths — plus cottonwood, tamarack, willow and birch. Some wood looks trimmed with metal: unusual for the time but possible, since indirect trade linked the people here to metal-producing communities in Asia.
• A few bone, antler and ivory objects — part of a fishing spear, a possible fish hook, bird arrowheads, bone points, a seal dart point — but little carving debris, so such carving was probably done elsewhere.
• Small human figures, caribou figurines and maskettes, perhaps carved with the flakes. Whether they were for amusement, teaching, curing or ritual is unknown. Many were looted before the excavation and are in private collections, and with them went the clues their place in the qarigi could have given.

Who dug

The Shared Beringian Heritage Program funded the Golovin Heritage Field School, run by the Golovin Native Corporation, which controls land on the southern Seward Peninsula along northeastern Norton Sound. High school students from Golovin and from Nove Chaplino, in Chukotka, Russia, excavated alongside students and staff from the Bering Straits Foundation, the University of Alaska and private firms.

Sources

• National Park Service, Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, "Excavating Qarigi at the Qitchauvik Site." https://www.nps.gov/articles/excavating-qarigi-qitchauvik-site.htm
• Rewritten in hubnx's own words.