Published Jul 9, 2024 by Tim Ellis Archeologists excavating an ancient pit house near Delta Junction say the artifacts they’ve found have helped them understand more about the people who lived in the area over the past 14,000 years -- and their possible canine companions.
The archeologists have been excavating prehistoric dwellings around the eastern Interior for decades. And artifacts found at a more recently discovered site about 25 miles south of Delta Junction are filling in some gaps in their understanding of the ancient peoples who lived there.
“Yeah, so this is the Hollembaek Hill site, says François Lanoë, an archeologist with the University of Arizona who’s also affiliated with University of Alaska Fairbanks. “We’ve been excavating there for about 10 years,” he said.
Lanoë and a dozen or so others have for the past few weeks been carefully excavating the site, located on land owned by longtime local farmer Scott Hollembaek. He says they’ve determined that, “we have about 2 meters of sediment sitting on top of the bedrock.”
Lanoë says members of the crew had excavated down to that level in one portion of the dwelling, which he called a “house-pit.” He says it likely had a dome-style roof made of willows, spruce bark and animal hides.
They brought buckets of powdery, excavated soil to Annika Mayer, a field technician with the University of Alaska Museum of the North. She was pouring the soil through a wire screen and sifting out shards of bone or chipped stone that shed light on the people who inhabited the place 8,000 or 9,000 years ago.
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