Gender, Identity, and Belonging: A Community-based Social Archaeology of the Nunalleq Site in Quinhagak, Alaska

This dissertation presents a social approach to archaeology at the Nunalleq site, located just outside the contemporary Yup’ik community of Quinhagak, Alaska. Nunalleq is a pre-contact village comprised of two sod house complexes occupied intermittently between about AD 1570 and 1675, concurrent with the Bow-and-Arrow Wars period on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. Since 2009, the site has been the subject of the Nunalleq Archaeology Project, a collaboration between the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, and Quinhagak’s Qanirtuuq Inc., an Alaska Native Village Corporation. Threatened by climate change, Nunalleq has yielded a stunning array of well-preserved material culture, including masks, human and zoomorphic figurines, wooden tool handles, grass basketry and cordage, lithic artifacts such as knife blades and drill bits, clay lamps, and abundant faunal, botanical, and paleoentymological remains. Residents of nearby Quinhagak feel connected to the site, and consider its inhabitants to be their ancestors. \n\nFollowing Indigenous, decolonizing, and community-based approaches to archaeology; gender archaeologies; and Native feminist theories, this project uses local knowledge about Yup’ik social identities to interpret three material culture categories at Nunalleq: 1. objects related to facial adornment, including labrets and human representations featuring tattoos and nose beads; 2. uluat, or “women’s knives;” and 3. bentwood vessels featuring incised qaraliq markings. Anthropological and archaeological methods are combined in this research. While semi-structured ethnographic interviews from Quinhagak residents guide project themes and interpretations, the results of archaeological stylistic analyses and 19th and 20th century ethnographic materials are also woven in, creating a multidimensional assessment of how site inhabitants expressed gender, identity, and belonging. \nWhile gender, age, status, and forms of family, village, and regional identity were all likely important in the social world of the ancestors, overarching concepts of Yup’ik personhood cross these categories and come to the fore as key to identity formation. Conceptions of the social world authored by Quinhagak residents and other Yup’ik culture-bearers helped reveal these dynamics. Methods of listening and a focus on local iterations of identity were important components of the research, and may be useful approaches for future community-based archaeologies of past social worlds.

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