Pottery from Hooper Bay Village, Alaska

Abstract

Archaeological excavations along coastal Alaska from Cape Prince of Wales south to the Alaska Peninsula, a distance of approximately 2000 miles, were not initiated until 1948, when Giddings (1949) began work in the north at Cape Denbigh, and Larsen (1950) began at Bristol Bay in the southern section of this great area (see Fig. 7). During the summer of 1950 the writer carried out excavations at Hooper Bay, in approximately the center of the unworked region. Although the Hooper Bay Village material includes about 2000 artifacts and 1500 pot and lamp sherds, this paper is limited to a preliminary analysis of the cooking pots. The importance of pottery in determining the sequence within Eskimo prehistory has been neglected, in the face of the abundance of organic material which the frozen middens and house remains yield. The full significance of Alaskan pottery was not emphasized until de Laguna (1947) made her detailed study of the ware; also, Larsen (1950, p. 186) pointed out that potsherds are particularly good time indicators in a region like southwestern Alaska, where the preservation is poor. In this paper the Hooper Bay sherds are considered with particular reference to their position within the Bristol Bay-Norton Sound region and their relationship to finds of similar pottery in the north.