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Archaeologists from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Northern Land Use Research Alaska, and area tribal councils encountered a birch bark-lined cache at a known Dene site along Upper Cook Inlet in June of 2024.
Dene, or Athabascan, is a language group stretching from the Alaska Interior through Canada and into the American Southwest. Athabascans – including Dena’ina and Ahtna people – are Dene speakers.
Cache pits are similar to root cellars and were used to preserve fish, meat, and berries, said Elizabeth Ortiz, an archaeologist and JBER cultural resource manager. The caches were dug into well-drained soils and lined with birch bark and layers of grasses to preserve food and are rarely discovered intact, she said.
Initial radiocarbon dating revealed that the cache was used around 1,000 years ago.
“This is the oldest known site on the east side of Upper Cook Inlet, and further substantiates Dena’ina and Ahtna oral traditions that JBER and the surrounding area have been used for a very long time,” said Margan Grover, archaeologist and JBER cultural resource manager. While examples are occasionally found in the Matanuska and Susitna valleys and on the Kenai Peninsula, it is unusual for Dene bark-lined cache pits and house sites to be preserved in the Anchorage Bowl due to a history of disturbance from development. For their rarity, each Dene site preserved on JBER holds extra significance to the area’s first peoples.
The site where the cache was encountered has long been associated with Dena’ina and Ahtna people and sits near a traditional trail used to travel between the area and the Matanuska and Susitna valleys, Ortiz said.
People came to this area in the spring and would stay through the summer to catch and preserve salmon. Traditional houses, called nichił, and smokehouses lined the bluff and beach along Upper Cook Inlet.
Finding the cache provides a valuable learning opportunity for everyone, the archaeologists said.
“I want this to be an opportunity for people to understand who the Dene of Knik Arm are and how their ancestors lived on the land that is now JBER and Anchorage,” said Grover. “The Dene have a sophisticated understanding of their environment that allowed them to thrive for generations. It wasn’t all about salmon – they established a cyclical system of movement that allowed them to be in the right place at the right time for hunting, fishing, gathering, weather, and socializing. The mouth of Ship Creek was one of the centers of this system. They occupied a large area that included all the resources needed to succeed year-round. They actively managed the resources in their territory, doing small things to enhance what nature already provides.”
Most of the site was demolished by the military in 1942, Grover said. Remarkably, this cache pit contains an intact birch-bark lining and is one of the few undisturbed features left at the Dene site. Samples of the intact bark lining were used to test the age and contents of the cache pit.
“Additional radiocarbon and stable isotope tests could yield new and significant information about the history of Upper Cook Inlet,” Ortiz said. “We are also testing to determine what types of food were stored in the cache, and what other activities took place in the surrounding area.”
The stable isotope analysis looks at ratios of nitrogen and carbon, revealing whether the source of the food stored there was marine or terrestrial. Initial results indicate the cache was used to store moose or caribou.
“Our research questions and methods are being developed in collaboration with area tribes who have not had access to these traditional lands for many decades,” said Grover. “I would like to be able to continue working with Chickaloon Village Traditional Council and Native Village of Eklutna in identifying what research is most productive at the site, while preserving portions of it for the future. Personally, I’m looking forward to knowing more about what was stored in the cache, if there are signs of other activities in the area and what they were, and what the environment was like.”
Not only will the cache provide valuable information, it’s also an opportunity for JBER to build relationships.
“Research at this site provides an invaluable opportunity to work toward shared goals and the co-production of knowledge about our past,” said Aaron Leggett, president and chair of the Native Village of Eklutna and senior curator for Alaska History and Indigenous Cultures at the Anchorage Museum. “It will also strengthen and prioritize the government-to-government relationship between area tribes and the United States military.”
| Date Taken: | 12.06.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 12.13.2024 13:19 |
| Story ID: | 486893 |
| Location: | JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, ALASKA, US |
| Web Views: | 46 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, JBER yields rare Dene cache, by Nicholas Holland and Christina McCann, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
