Knife discovered at Kodiak Community Archaeology site

An archaeology program has discovered a primitive knife in their fourth year of digging the Kashevaroff site at Salonie Creek in Kodiak, one of the many pieces of evidence that point to the site having been a hunting camp.

“We’re down in the very bottom levels of the site, and all the artifacts we’re finding now are like 6 to 7,000 years old,” said Patrick Saltonstall, Alutiiq Museum Curator of Archaeology.

The Alutiiq Museum’s Community Archaeology program led to the discovery of a knife this week.

 

“We’ve been finding really complete tools, and what’s neat is we haven’t been finding a lot of the debris,” he said. “When you make a tool, you have a lot of flakes and bits of slate and stuff, and we haven’t been finding any of that. We’re just finding tools or the broken tools, ’cause they’ve been bringing them to the site.”

The group is in its  fourth year of digging at the site. Saltonstall said they’re about to finish up on the current section and they’ve been uncovering many objects.

“It’s kind of unique ’cause it’s so big,” he said. “We find a lot of hunting lances that are shaped the same way from the same time period, but they’re about half that size. We’ve never found anything quite that big.

According to the museum website, field and lab work will continue until August 12.

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