The Ipiutak site is a large
archaeological site
An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology an ...
at
Point Hope
Point Hope ( ik, Tikiġaq, ) is a city in North Slope Borough, Alaska, United States. At the 2010 census the population was 674, down from 757 in 2000. In the 2020 Census, population rose to 830.
Like many isolated communities in Alaska, the c ...
in northwest
Alaska
Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S., ...
, United States. It is one of the most important discoveries in this area, competing only with
Ekven Ekven is an archaeological site in the Russian Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. It is located 30 km from the village of Uelen. Here a 2000-year-old Eskimo Cemetery from the Old Bering Sea culture was discovered by D.A. Sergeev and S.A. Arutiunov. T ...
, Russia.
It is the
type site
In archaeology, a type site is the site used to define a particular archaeological culture or other typological unit, which is often named after it. For example, discoveries at La Tène and Hallstatt led scholars to divide the European Iron Age ...
for the Ipiutak culture, which arose possibly as early as 100–200 BCE and collapsed around 800 CE. The Ipiutak culture occurred from south of the
Bering Strait, across the
Brooks Range
The Brooks Range ( Gwich'in: ''Gwazhał'') is a mountain range in far northern North America stretching some from west to east across northern Alaska into Canada's Yukon Territory. Reaching a peak elevation of on Mount Isto, the range is believ ...
and possibly as far north as Point Barrow.
The Ipiutak site was discovered in 1939 by archaeologists Helge Larsen and
Froelich Rainey
Froelich Gladstone Rainey (June 18, 1907 – October 11, 1992) was an American anthropologist and Director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology from 1947 to 1977. Under his leadership, the Penn Museum announced ...
, who completed a
monograph
A monograph is a specialist work of writing (in contrast to reference works) or exhibition on a single subject or an aspect of a subject, often by a single author or artist, and usually on a scholarly subject.
In library cataloging, ''monograph ...
on the site in 1948. The site consists of nearly 600 abandoned house depressions along four
beach ridge
A beach ridge is a wave-swept or wave-deposited ridge running parallel to a shoreline. It is commonly composed of sand as well as sediment worked from underlying beach material. The movement of sediment by wave action is called ''littoral tra ...
s that impart a linearity that was originally interpreted as purposeful design as roads or "avenues." Many of the houses are too close to be contemporaneous and the range of several
radiocarbon ages suggests a duration of 300–400 years to build all of the houses. Archaeologists have modeled the population history of the site to infer that only about 125–200 people lived at the site during any one generation and occupied 20 to 30 houses. The original population estimates of over 4000 are in error.
Excavations in 1940 and 1941 produced sizable collections from 74 square
driftwood
__NOTOC__
Driftwood is wood that has been washed onto a shore or beach of a sea, lake, or river by the action of winds, tides or waves.
In some waterfront areas, driftwood is a major nuisance. However, the driftwood provides shelter and fo ...
constructed houses and over 120 burials, now archived within three museums: the
National Museum of Denmark
The National Museum of Denmark (Nationalmuseet) in Copenhagen is Denmark's largest museum of cultural history, comprising the histories of Danish and foreign cultures, alike. The museum's main building is located a short distance from Strøget ...
, the
American Museum of Natural History
The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 inter ...
and the
University of Alaska Fairbanks
The University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF or Alaska) is a public land-grant research university in College, Alaska, a suburb of Fairbanks. It is the flagship campus of the University of Alaska system. UAF was established in 1917 and opened for cla ...
.
The site is renowned for its mortuary offerings, one of which is termed a "mask." One Point Hope Ipiutak mask represents a human face with a gaping mouth and
blowfly larvae issuing from its nostrils; a symbol pregnant with
shamanistic
Shamanism is a religious practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with what they believe to be a spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spiritu ...
meaning. A very similar "maskoid" is reported from
Deering, that is dated between 600 and 800 CE. A variety of open work ivory carvings, engraved with iron
burins, are renowned for their figurative representations that include
polar bear
The polar bear (''Ursus maritimus'') is a hypercarnivorous bear whose native range lies largely within the Arctic Circle, encompassing the Arctic Ocean, its surrounding seas and surrounding land masses. It is the largest extant bear specie ...
s,
loon
Loons (North American English) or divers (British / Irish English) are a group of aquatic birds found in much of North America and northern Eurasia. All living species of loons are members of the genus ''Gavia'', family Gaviidae and order Gavi ...
s, seals, and (rarely) humans. Ipiutak houses contain evidence of military and craft specialization in working walrus tusk, while a number of graves show evidence of violence associated with warfare.
Two technological hallmarks of Ipiutak culture are its very finely crafted stone tools used in
arrow points and its lack of ceramics. The Ipiutak culture is defined by a distinctive linear, circle and dot aesthetic, that closely resembles the Old Bering Sea culture, which is restricted to Bering Strait and adjacent
Siberia
Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of ...
. Ipiutak is contemporaneous with the later phases of Old Bering Sea and very likely had had political, economic and social ties with it. The original excavators, Larsen and Rainey, linked the Ipiutak open work animal carving style with the distant and Scthyo-Siberian cultures of the Ukraine, but little data support this supposition. Instead, Ipiutak closely resembles the widespread pan Alaska
Norton Norton may refer to:
Places
Norton, meaning 'north settlement' in Old English, is a common place name. Places named Norton include: Canada
*Rural Municipality of Norton No. 69, Saskatchewan
*Norton Parish, New Brunswick
**Norton, New Brunswick, a ...
culture, which did use ceramics and relied on salmon fishing. The subsistence basis of Ipiutak was sea mammal hunting, most importantly of
ringed seal
The ringed seal (''Pusa hispida'') is an earless seal inhabiting the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. The ringed seal is a relatively small seal, rarely greater than 1.5 m in length, with a distinctive patterning of dark spots surrounded by light g ...
and
walrus
The walrus (''Odobenus rosmarus'') is a large pinniped, flippered marine mammal with a discontinuous distribution about the North Pole in the Arctic Ocean and subarctic seas of the Northern Hemisphere. The walrus is the only living species in ...
, although
caribou
Reindeer (in North American English, known as caribou if wild and ''reindeer'' if domesticated) are deer in the genus ''Rangifer''. For the last few decades, reindeer were assigned to one species, ''Rangifer tarandus'', with about 10 subspe ...
hunting was also crucial.
The site was declared a
National Historic Landmark
A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Only some 2,500 (~3%) of over 90,000 places listed ...
in 1961
and was added to the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
in 1966.
Several other sites have also been linked to Ipiutak: at
Cape Krusenstern
Cape Krusenstern is a cape on the northwestern coast of the U.S. state of Alaska, located near the village of Kivalina at .
It is bounded by Kotzebue Sound to the south and the Chukchi Sea to the west, and consists of a series of beach ridges a ...
, Itivlik Lake, Hahanudan Lake, Feniak Lake,
Onion Portage Archeological District
The Onion Portage Archeological District encompasses a major archaeological site in Kobuk Valley National Park in northwestern Alaska. The site is a deeply stratified site, at which archaeologists have located nine complexes ranging dating from ...
, and
Anaktuvuk Pass, Alaska
Anaktuvuk Pass ( ik, Anaqtuuvak, , or , ) is a city
in North Slope Borough, Alaska, United States. The population was 282 at the 2000 census and 324 as of the 2010 census.
History
Anaktuvuk Pass was named after the Anaktuvuk River. ''Anak ...
. The culture is noted for the elaborateness of its artwork, which seems to be an ancestor of
Inuit art
Inuit art, also known as Eskimo art, refers to artwork produced by Inuit, that is, the people of the Arctic previously known as Eskimos, a term that is now often considered offensive. Historically, their preferred medium was walrus ivory, but s ...
. It is still unclear why the Ipiutak apparently did not
hunt whale or make pottery, considering that they lived in highly developed settlements.
[Owen K. Mason. "Ipiutak Remains Mysterious: A Focal Place Still Out of Focus." In Dynamics of Northern Societies. Proceedings of a Symposium, edited by Bjarne Grønnow, pp. 106-120, Danish National Museum, Danish Polar Center, Copenhagen. 2006.]
See also
*
Birnirk culture
The Birnirk culture was a prehistoric Inuit culture of the north coast of Alaska, dating from the sixth century A.D. to the twelfth century A.D. The Birnirk culture first appeared on the American side of the Bering Strait, descending from the Ol ...
*
Ekven Ekven is an archaeological site in the Russian Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. It is located 30 km from the village of Uelen. Here a 2000-year-old Eskimo Cemetery from the Old Bering Sea culture was discovered by D.A. Sergeev and S.A. Arutiunov. T ...
*
Iñupiat
The Iñupiat (or Inupiat, Iñupiaq or Inupiaq;) are a group of Alaska Natives, whose traditional territory roughly spans northeast from Norton Sound on the Bering Sea to the northernmost part of the Canada–United States border. Their current ...
*
Norton tradition
The Norton tradition is an archaeological culture that developed in the Western Arctic along the Alaskan shore of the Bering Strait around 1000 BC and lasted through about 800 AD. The Norton people used flake-stone tools like their predecessors, ...
*
Tikiġaġmiut
The Tikiġaġmiut (), an Iñupiat people, live two hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle, southwest of Utqiagvik, Alaska, in the village of Point Hope ( ik, Tikiġaq). The Tikigaq are the oldest continuously settled Native American site on th ...
*
List of National Historic Landmarks in Alaska
The National Historic Landmarks in Alaska represent Alaska's history from its Russian heritage to its statehood. There are 50 National Historic Landmarks (NHLs) in the state. The United States National Historic Landmark program is operated under ...
*
References
{{Authority control
National Historic Landmarks in Alaska
North Slope Borough, Alaska
Archaeological sites on the National Register of Historic Places in Alaska
Archaeological type sites
History of indigenous peoples of North America
National Register of Historic Places in North Slope Borough, Alaska