The Rat Islands Project funding and period of active research ended nearly four years ago. Since then, we’ve published all but one final summary article, presented aspects of the research, and defended two PhD dissertations.
We applied for three years of funding for the Rat Islands project, and received one. Our team of researchers and students catalyzed that funding into longer-term interdisciplinary work that will contribute to research in the region for decades.
The Rat Islands work continues, even if sometimes in the broader western Aleutians Islands context. We look forward to sharing this new work with you in the coming years.
Nancy Bigelow, our project specialist in pollen and plant macrofossils, took several peat cores and column samples from the area around our Summer 2014 camp – which happened to be situated near a newly described prehistoric Aleut village site (KIS-050). Her cores will give us a dated sequence of plant macrofossils (which come from the local area) and pollen (which may be wind-borne from a much broader area). Plants are sensitive to environmental changes like the amount of precipitation, temperature, windiness, soil chemistry, or amount of sunlight – and the impacts of human activities near them or interventions in their lifecycle.
Dr. Bigelow’s cores are the first from Kiska Island and her work will introduce entirely new information about the prehistoric environment shared by Aleuts, plants, and animals. Her research will combine with the archaeology team’s data to help us frame new questions about Aleut plant use and landscape manipulation. As the field images below show, processing a core is labor intensive, from the extraction process to lab sampling and analysis. Results from the processing of the first core should be ready this spring.
Bigelow and Harding starting a peat core on the open plain near prehistoric village site KIS-050. (Photo by B. Hoffman 2014.)
Bigelow and Harding coring. (Photo by B. Hoffman 2014.)
Done! (Photo by B. Hoffman 2014.)
Bigelow, Harding, Hornbeck field packing the core. (Photo by B. Hoffman 2014.)
The extracted soil core moves from the corer to the packing tube. (Photo by B. Hoffman 2014.)
Bigelow and Goranson coring on the plain. KIS-050 visible in the background. (Photo by B. Hoffman 2014.)
Peat core. (Figure by N. Bigelow 2014).
Peat core with archaeological fish lens. (Figure by N. Bigelow 2014.)
Courtney Sessum and Kelsey Saylor begin the process of dissecting intertidal samples in the UAF wet lab. Once they have been cleaned, dissected, freeze dried and powdered the samples will be run through an IRMS for nitrogen and carbon isotope analysis at the Alaska Stable Isotope Facility at UAF.
Researching human and environmental intersections in the Aleutian Islands.
