Chaluka is a 3500-4000 year old site on the mountainous island of Unmak, in the Aleutian archipelago of Alaska. Known since the beginning of the 20th century, it was firstly excavated in 1938 and later in the 60s and 70s by W.S. Laughlin and Jean Aigner. Chaluka was a village with partially underground houses lined with stone slabs and whale bones.
Archaeology at Chaluka
The maritime village of Chaluka was occupied from ca 4000 BC until AD 1500. The site is now an oval mound more than 6 meters high, located at the mouth of the Unmak creek, near the modern town of Nikolski.
Archaeologists identified 11 major levels within the mound related to occupation episodes. These episodes correspond to deposition of sea urchins and levels composed by soil mixed with remnants of sea urchins. House structures were found at the base of these levels, where 6 stone walls were uncovered, along with several burials.
The lifestyle of the people living at Chaluka was based on a maritime economy, such as hunting sea mammals, like sea otters, seals and whales, along with fishing, collecting shells and mollusks, and digging roots, when the season allowed it.
Chaluka Artifacts
People living at Chaluka, as many other Arctic groups, made a sophisticated array of tools to carry out different tasks. The most important were hunting tools, manufacturing tools and ornaments. Among the hunting tools, archaeologists recovered: bone fishhooks, barbed points and harpoons, and spearheads. Manufacturing tools included bone awls and needles, drills made of whale bones, bone adze heads, wedges, stone and bone implements to grind pigments, such as ochre, and root diggers made out of sea mammals ribs.
A final category of artifacts include personal ornaments such as pendants made of tooth and labrets.
Labrets were particularly important ornaments among Arctic and North West Coast cultures of North America. At Chaluka, these were of two sizes, the smaller were worn by people, as facial decorations, whereas the larger ones were probably used on masks.
Sources
This glossary entry is a part of the About.com guide to the Arctic, the Guide to North American Archaeology, and the Dictionary of Archaeology.
Turner II, Christy G. , Jean S. Aigner, and Linda R. Richards, 1974, Chaluka Stratigraphy, Umnak Island, Alaska. Arctic Anthropology, Vol. 11, Supplement: Festschrift Issue in Honor of Chester S.Chard, pp. 125-142.
Aigner, Jean S., 1966, Bone Tools and Decorative Motifs from Chaluka, Umnak Island. Arctic Anthropology, Vol. 3, No. 2, Studies in Aleutian-Kodiak Prehistory, Ecology and Anthropology, pp. 57-83.