Ethnoarchaeological analysis of Arctic fish processing: chemical characterization of soils on Nelson Island,Alaska

Activity area analysis of archaeological soils using multi-element characterizations can illuminate how subsistence operations are organized and how subsistence behavior has changed over time, and is increasingly common at archaeological sites. However, in many regions it is impossible to examine the elemental signatures in known anthropogenic soil samples in order to compare them with unknown archaeological samples. This ethnoarchaeological study examines the chemical composition of the soils at known fish processing areas in the contemporary community of Tununak on Nelson Island, western Alaska. Using a quadrupole inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer (Q-ICP-MS), the concentrations of the following elements in the soil extract were recorded in parts per million (ppm): aluminum (Al), barium (Ba), calcium (Ca), iron (Fe), potassium (K), magnesium (Mg), manganese (Mn), sodium (Na), phosphorus (P), strontium (Sr), titanium (Ti), and zinc (Zn). Fish processing area features are elevated in various elements, including sodium, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and manganese, and Ba/Sr, Ba/Ca, and Sr/Ca are also useful in distinguishing between fish processing areas and offsite areas.     

Soil chemical signatures of a historic sod house: activity area analysis of an arctic semisubterranean structure on Nelson Island,Alaska

On Nelson Island in western Alaska, some Yup’ik inhabitants built and inhabited semisubterranean houses until the early 1960s. This affords a unique opportunity to examine known activity areas of ethnoarchaeological soils using multielement chemical characterization of soils. These data can then be compared to archaeological investigations, allowing a nuanced and sophisticated understanding of the activities performed in the past. Here, we present elemental concentration data from soil extracts, generated with a quadrupole inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer, of the following elements in the soil extract recorded in parts per billion: sodium (Na), magnesium (Mg), aluminum (Al), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), calcium (Ca), titanium (Ti), chromium (Cr), manganese (Mn), iron (Fe), cobalt (Co), nickel (Ni), copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), arsenic (As), strontium (Sr), barium (Ba), lead (Pb), and uranium (U). When compared to an offsite area, the sod house samples were enriched in phosphorus and magnesium, and specific areas within the sod house exhibited different signatures related to different activities, including the incorporation of wood ash and waste into the soil.     

The Social Role of Technology in Coastal Alaska

Novel technologies linked to women and men through identity-demarcated tasks and knowledge sets can potentially have differential and even long-term effects on each group. This study follows the trajectory of two significant imports into the coastal western Alaskan system, the firearm and the metal cook pot. These imports had different implications for coastal Yup’ik women and men, young and old. Over time the gun became an integral piece of a man’s tool kit and one that had the potential to boost production and thus a man’s access to status-building. However, these same tools had the potential to undermine the apprenticeship system of male authority. Likewise, the metal cook pot replaced the productive oversight and skill set of elder women’s ceramic production but created paths of independence for younger Yup’ik women. These changes in technology destabilized relative balances of gender and age based status, security, and authority and fashioned new gender and age based social and economic opportunities and limitations.     

How to Make an Unfired Clay Cooking Pot: Understanding the Technological Choices Made by Arctic Potters

Between about 500 a.d. and the late nineteenth century, clay cooking pots associated with the Thule culture were produced in the Arctic region. Ethnographic and archaeological records indicate that these vessels were typically underfired (often even unfired), highly porous, and easily broken. Despite these characteristics, the evidence indicates that they were used to heat water over open fires. In this paper, we examine how Arctic potters were able to produce unsintered vessels capable of holding liquids without disintegrating. We conclude that the application of seal oil and seal blood to the pot’s surface was the key to their success.

San Francisco's Pioneer Mother Monument: maternalism, racial order, and the politics of memorialization, 1907–1915

The 1907–1915 campaign to create San Francisco's Pioneer Mother Monument provides both a case study of conservative uses of maternalism and a window into the political mutability of maternalist rhetoric. Ella Sterling Mighels, a pioneer descendant, utilized the monument campaign to promote white women's moral influence over middle-class men, to argue against Asian immigration and labor unrest, and to inculcate old-fashioned moral values among urban children. Although some of Mighels's contemporaries cited pioneer mothers as proof of women's fitness for suffrage, Mighels herself used the pioneer mother to argue against suffrage. The final statue, created by the sculptor Charles Grafly, failed to encapsulate Mighels's multivalent political message and to express her ideals about gender, race, class, and morality.     

“Strangers are Flocking Here”: Identity and Anonymity in New Orleans, 1810–1860

When the population of New Orleans increased dramatically during the nineteenth century, it became a place of strangers. While historians have documented the experiences of different groups in the city, the nineteenth‐century urban world was defined largely by those unknown, by the strangers one passed in the streets. The present study explores how residents of the city coped with this change by analyzing the meanings they ascribed to strangers. It also illustrates why the ability of a stranger to legitimize his/her identity became a crucial means of escaping scrutiny and obtaining acceptance by society. The essay examines the reception of two groups of strangers: elite travelers who sought to read and interpret the city and its subjects and new residents who sought opportunity and adventure, but instead became alienated from society and castigated as vagrants and suspicious people. Although city residents largely came to terms with the anonymity of city life by the 1850s, this essay explores the preceding decades when strangers invoked both fear and excitement.