You never know where relics from the distant past are going to pop up next - take Mike Caine movies - at the beginning of the 'The Ipcress File', we see one of the characters thumbing his way through a very 60s-looking copy of 'New Scientist', whiilst in another, 'Pulp', we see Caine loitering with some or other intent around the megalithic ruins of Malta and Gozo - even though the actress declares them to be ony 2,000 years old, whereas in reality they span a far a greater period of prehistory.And now a wobbly wooden bridge on Amaknak Island in the Aleutian Islands is partly responsible for the recent find of an Aleut whalebone mask, that may date back 3,000 years, making it 2 millennia older than the next oldest artifact of its kind. In an effort to replace the old bridge with a superior concrete model, construction on a new concrete version has meant that archaeologists working alongside construction crews have had the chance to sift through spoil heaps at Unalaska, a small city located on both Unalaska and Amaknak islands.
People at the ancient site -- a sprawling village marked by unprecedented stone houses and delicate ivory carvings -- ate polar bears, ice seals that no longer visit the island, and a whale that's never been documented in North American waters, said Knecht. He led a dig at the village in 2003 but wasn't part of the mask discovery.
Perhaps six inches wide once, the mask could have been worn and broken at a funeral, Yarborough said. Cultural anthropologist Lydia Black, who died earlier this year, wrote that members of ancient Aleut burial parties wore and shattered tiny masks during funerals.
"It's speculation to say what happened 3,000 years ago, but it was broken when we found it," Yarborough said. "It very well could have been (a funeral mask)."
People occupied the village sometime between 2,400 and 3,400 years ago, but materials found near the mask indicate it's 3,000 years old, he said.
It's generally similar in appearance to its next oldest cousin, a 1,000-year-old mask found at Izembek Lagoon on the Alaska Peninsula, he said. That one, also a half mask, is on display at the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center.
Denise Rankin, vice president of the tribal government in Unalaska and an employee with the Native corporation, said features such as the round head, almond-shaped eyes and slender nose remind her of people she sees today.
"They look just like an Aleut face," she said.
Knecht, e-mailed a picture of the mask, said the giant eyebrows evoke ancient images of faces pecked into granite boulders at Cape Alitak on Kodiak Island. The petroglyphs, made with hammer stones more than 500 miles east of Unalaska, were created more than 2,000 years ago, he said. "It's a great find," he said of the mask.
This find has not been in isolation - the excavations have uncovered an ancient Aleut village, which has turned out to be a great deal larger than expected - extending the dig, and increasing the costs. In the event, this means that mechanical diggers are lifting the soil to save time and money, which means that the archaeology largely involves screening a vast spoil-heap in a fenced-off area nearby - it was in this way that the mask was found.
Archaeologists have trucked about 2,700 cubic yards of dirt to the fenced area and seeded it so grass will grow, Yarborough said. Some people have talked about letting students sift through the dirt as part of a class, he said. Discovered artifacts have gone to a lab for storage and later will be sent to the local museum. But the mask went directly to the museum to be placed in a climate-controlled area and watched by a curator.
(Professor Rick) Knecht, who opposed the backhoe excavation, said a more traditional dig with archaeologists sifting dirt through screens might have found the rest of the mask. Those pieces are likely buried in the big pile behind the fence, he said.
"I shudder to think what's been damaged or lost," he said. "I know they're being as careful as they can given the limitations of digging with heavy equipment. But inevitably there's a price to be paid in history and culture by taking that shortcut."
As we have seen at the Herefordshire site of Rotherwas, in the case of the Dinedor Serpent, modern construction projects like these often throw up archaeology that might not otherwise have been discovered - as well as occasionally hinting at a past that was significantly more complex and far more difficult to interpret - too bad that the discovery of these sites is often the agent of their eventual destruction.
The ancient village where the mask came from has yielded several important discoveries, including the remains of dozens of homes, Knecht said. They had stone walls and sub-floor heating ducts to spread heat through the homes, he said.
Archaeologists have also found well-preserved human remains from ceremonial burials and elaborate jewelry such as an ivory hair pin with decorative faces carved on both sides.
The state has spent about $1.65 million on the excavation so it could replace a wobbly, wood-surfaced bridge built in 1979. A $28 million, 700-foot concrete bridge is scheduled to rise alongside it within two years, said Michael Hall, design project manager.
Interesting to read that these people may have had underfloor heating around a thousand years earlier than the Romans - which made me briefly wonder if Roman road-builders had encountered such obstacles in the course of their civil engineering projects. I seem to recall seeing the path of a Roman road coursing straight through an older henge or barrow, whereas elsewhere, at Silbury Hill, they went to the trouble of constructing a settlement in its very shadow.
