Research and Researchers

For the first 60 days that I was at the Museum of the Aleutians, we had a researcher in the building every day. Marjolein Admiraal, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Gronigen, in York, England, came to do isotope studies on 4,000 year old stone bowl cooking vessels. Then, Kale Bruner, a Ph.D. candidate from the University of Kansas, came to do a Minimum Nodule Analysis study at another 6,000 year old site. She is looking for "standard technological attributes to reconstruct lithic nodules brought to and reduced at different archaeological sites."

Her work was amazing. She started with our collections of thousands of unsorted flakes - the trash left when making a stone tool - and sorted them by color and then by geological grain pattern. She analyzed the grain by placing each flake under a microscope. She worked in the museum every day for 8 weeks and identified more than 50 nodules, or cores,  in each of the three assemblages. A core is the piece of rock that a paleolithic hunter would start with when making a tool.

I would normally consider the stuff she was working with as trash. I never understood the value of these small pieces of rock. But her dissertation is ground breaking and has opened my eyes to a whole new line of research

This week, our new Collections Manager came onto staff. We have initiated a new strategic direction, with a focus on staff directed research. The first thing she is working on is an National Science Foundation emergency grant to complete excavations at an archaeological site that is eroding along one of the beaches. I have been monitoring the site since I got here. It is an unprotected site that is being looted as it erodes. The Aleutian Islands are ground central for climate change. And both the archaeological collections at the museum and the sites around the islands offer research opportunities to show how quickly the climate has shifted in the past, and how humans have adapted to these shifts.


It is exciting stuff. I wish I had the background to do the actual research. The science is cool. But evidently it is my job to put the science into accessible words and programs so that everyone can benefit. In the last 60 days we have been awarded three small grants that I have written and we will be producing a series of four quick temporary exhibits focused on our research collections. That, I think, will this weekend.