Nunalleq, After the Typhoon

Nunalleq is an archaeological site in western Alaska that dates to between 700 and 400 years ago. The site was never lost and the Yu'pik people who used to live there now live just a few miles away. Over the past twenty years Nunalleq has been eroding into the see, and the locals reached out to archaeologists to help them recover artifacts from the site before it disappeared. This led to a very fruitful cooperation between local people and archaeologists from the University of Aberdeen, and the establishment of a local museum. I have written about this site here twice before (2014, 2019).

Wooden artifacts from Nunalleq

Then last month the remains of Typhoon Halong slammed into the coast, eating 60 feet into the land and washing away most of the site. People began finding artifacts all along the shore, like the wooden mask at the top of the post. In the NY Times, Sachi Kitajima Mulkey has a good article about the effort to recover artifacts from the beach and the ongoing debate among the Yu'pik over whether they should move their village even farther from the sea. Climate change has not yet had much impact across most of the world, but in the arctic the impact has already been profound.