Out at Kivalina River camp today, cutting through the blazing blue sky, came Stan, our helicopter pilot, and two boys from Kivalina McQueen High School (roughly 120 students). Byron (grade 11) and Roy (grade 10) came off the chopper and got right to work, screening the archaeologists buckets of leftover dirt from their
The summer can get a bit boring, they said, because hunting season, like caribou and beluga, doesn't begin until September. So this was a fantastic opportunity for them to check out how archaeologists do their thing, and they're having a great time so far. They quickly learned all of the new tools, including using a prism to receive the laser from the survey machine that marks the coordinates of the square exactly, and how to properly documents each of the artifacts they found.
Ian, one of our head archaeologists out on the bluff, helped them create a new unit, a one-meter-by-one-meter square that 200 chip stone artifacts of chert that was produced while they were manufacturing tools. It's pretty cool because this unit will be used all the way down and what they find is contributing to this study! "They're doing great," Jeff Rasic, another head archaeologist, said. "Enthusiastic and hard-working!"
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