A tale of three villages: Archaeological investigation of late prehistoric and historic culture change in western Alaska

This study examines the effect of contact on western native Alaskan culture and chronicles and evaluates the stages, consequences, and mechanisms of change stimulated by 19th and 20th century colonialism in western Alaska. I incorporate a direct historical approach in order to analyze cultural change and persistence. The study focuses on the site layout at three sequentially occupied sites and specifically examines the men's house, the family house, storage, and tunneling which display identifiable architectural changes among the sites during the historic period of mercantile and religious colonization.; Knowledge of the processes and effects of colonial expansion on indigenous groups is essential to understanding the archaeology of hunter-fisher-gatherers. The village of Chevak is located in the Yukon Delta where the native people continue to rely on a subsistence-based economy. Many of the modern members of the village and their ancestors lived at the sites of Qavinaq, a late prehistoric site, Nunaraluq, a pre- proto- and historic site, and Old Chevak, a recently occupied village site. Scholars have suggested that the native peoples of the Delta were minimally impacted by Russian trade influences which began in the early 1800s. However, the data at each of the sites, when contextualized by information from historic, ethnographic, and oral tradition sources, suggest this region did not remain pristine but was affected by Russian and later Anglo-American trade goods and market economy. I argue that when the Jesuit missionaries settled in the village of Nunaraluq in 1927, that significant cultural changes had already begun.; The changing nature of the site features illuminates the complex interplay of native social and economic structures and non-native contact, and when viewed through a theoretical lens of gender, provide material clues to the complex workings of colonization. Christianity had a profound impact on Eskimo culture, but earlier trade also affected the indigenous gendered spheres of authority. This study examines how native women and men and the young and old, reacted to, and benefited from, the stages of colonial expansion. I suggest that women's eroding economic status during early historic market expansion in the region helps explain variability in the native response to colonizing efforts. I document how these cultural changes are reflected in the architectural and settlement layout of the sites, and when contextualized with non-native observations and native testimony, a more nuanced view of cultural change is revealed.