News

ACZ Workshop at 44th Annual Meeting

If you forgot to sign up for the Alaska Consortium of Zooarchaeologists’ Workshop when you registered for the conference, you can still register Monday morning at 8:30 AM in the Gold East Room!

2016 Alaska Native Day at Fort Ross

If you’re in California in May, be sure to check out Alaska Native Day!

Location: Fort Ross State Historic Park

Date: May 21, 2016

Events

• John Sperry Memorial Qayak Race
• Baidar building
• Alaska Native dancing
• Kids’ Crafts:
  • Face “tattooing”
  • Language games
  • Petroglyph painting
  • Spear-throwing with atlatls
• Demonstrations:
  • Beading
  • Chagudax (hunter’s hats) carving

Centennial Science and Stewardship Symposium

In celebration of 100 years, the National Park Service – Alaska Region will host the Centennial Science and Stewardship Symposium at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, October 19-20, 2016. The symposium will highlight how science and scholarship have shaped the past 100 years of national park management and provide a forward look at the next century of collaborative science and scholarship in Alaska’s national parks.
A call for abstracts has gone out (submit no later than April 15th here).
Presentations may take any of 4 forms:

• Plenary Session
• Panel/Topic Session
• Poster
• Workshop

Registration is free to students, and $150 for all other attendees. Contact Whitney Boone (whitney_boone@nps.gov) with any questions.

Archaeology Day 2015!

If you are in the Anchorage area on Saturday, October 17th, be sure to check out Archaeology Day! The University of Alaska Anchorage will be hosting the event at the University Center Mall, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm.
Bring the whole family to learn about the human skeleton or flintknapping, or try your hand at throwing a spear with an atlatl! There will be displays about archaeology happening throughout Alaska!

When:
Saturday, October 17th
10:00 am – 5:00 pm

Where:
South End of the University Center Mall
Old Seward Highway and 36th Avenue
Anchorage, AK

AK Association for Historic Preservation Annual Benefit

The Alaska Association for Historic Preservation (AAHP) is inviting all members of the Alaska Anthropological Association to join them for their annual eat.drink.preserve. benefit to support Alaska’s 10 Most Endangered Historic Properties. Proceeds from the event will provide grant and seed money for threatened archaeological sites and historic buildings across the state.

Saturday, September 26th, 2015
6:00 – 9:00 pm
Pioneer School House
437 E 3rd Ave
Anchorage, AK

Tickets ($70.00) may be purchased here or by calling 907-929-9870.

The 2015 eat.drink.preserve. benefit is made possible by generous gifts from Nvision Architecture and the Bering Straits Native Corporation.

For more information, please go to the AAHP website or facebook page.

1813 camp of Neva shipwreck found near Sitka

After more than 200 years of searching, archaeologists have identified the wreck site of the Russian-American Company frigate Neva. Made famous as one of two Russian vessels to circumnavigate the globe (1803-1807) and a participant in the Battle of Sitka, the Neva wrecked off of Kruzof Island more than three months after departing the Siberian port of Okhotsk for Sitka. Of the 75 souls on board, 26 survived to be rescued after spending almost a month at the makeshift camp discovered by archaeologist Dave McMahan and crew this summer. With the help of local Tlingit oral history, the National Science Foundation-funded researchers located the camp and partially excavated the site, recovering artifacts that reflected the cannibalization of the ship’s wreckage and improvised modification of the available materials. McMahan, a retired Alaska State archaeologist and member of both the Sitka Historical Society and the Alaska Anthropological Association, has commented that “the items left behind by survivors provide a unique snapshot-in-time for January 1813, and might help us to understand the adaptations that allowed them to await rescue in a frigid, unfamiliar environment.

For more information (and photos!), check out the NSF Press Release or the Western Digs article

NAGPRA Community Workshop and Discussion

Join Josh Reuther (University of Alaska Fairbanks), Claudia Nissley (National Preservation Institute), Scott Shirar (UA Museum of the North), and Angela Linn (UA Museum of the North) for an informal presentation and discussion about the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act regulations.

Sponsored by the University of Alaska Museum of the North with a grant from the U.S. National Park Service, National NAGPRA Program.

Thursday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm
September 3rd, 2015
Morris Thompson Cultural & Visitors Center Classroom
101 Dunkel Street
Fairbanks, AK

Talk at Anchorage Museum: All Matters Iñupiaq

Dr. Edna Ahgeak MacLean will lecture on the importance of creating strong programs for Iñupiaq identity retention, in light of her recently published North Slope Iñupiaq Dictionary. Sponsored by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History’s Recovering Voices Program.

Thursday, 12:00 noon
September 3rd, 2015
Arctic Studies Center gallery
(2nd floor, west wing)
Anchorage Museum

Included with cost of admission.

Talk and Performance: Uplifting play addresses Depression in Alaska Native Teens

The Winter Bear is an uplifting play that tells the story of a suicidal Alaska Native teenager who rises above the traumas of his past to become a leader with the help of Sidney Huntington, a Koyukon elder. The Winter Bear Project (website) has traveled to 31 communities throughout Alaska.

Talk:
Monday, September 14th, 2015
7:30 – 9:00 pm
UAA/APU Consortium Library, Room 307
Anchorage, AK

Public discussion with playwright Anne Hanley and poet Stephen D. Bolen about The Winter Bear.
Anne Hanley is the first playwright to be named Alaska State Writer Laureate. She has an MFA in Film from UCLA and lives in Fairbanks, AK. For many years, she was a columnist for the Anchorage Daily News and the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. She co-edited The Alaska Reader: Voices from the North and is a founding producer of The Looking Glass Group Theatre.
Stephen Bolen is a gifted poet from Kotzebue, AK. Stephen is currently studying at UAA while working in construction and enjoying time with his daughter, Sonnet.

Free Performances:
Friday and Saturday, September 18th and 19th, 2015
7:30 p.m.
Alaska Pacific University, Grant Hall Theatre
Anchorage, AK

[recommended for ages 12 yrs and up]

Paleoclimate Talk at University of Alaska Anchorage

Dr. Julie Brigham-Grette, Chair of the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Chair of the Polar Research Board, National Academy of Sciences, will be participating in the August 31st discussion of climate change with the US Presidential group coming to Anchorage, Alaska. She will be giving a public talk at UAA on her research entitled “The Lake El’gygytgn Drilling Project, Chukotka: Understanding Inter-Hemispheric Polar Linkages in the Paleoclimatic Records since 3.6 MA“, co-sponsored by the UAA Anthropology and Geology Clubs.

Tuesday, September 1st, 2015
4:00-5:15 PM
AHS (Allied Health Sciences) Building, Room 106