SITKA, ALASKA—The Capital City Weekly reports that an international team of archaeologists led by Dave McMahan returned to Kruzov Island, where 26 survivors of the wreck of the Russian-American Company ship Neva are thought to have awaited rescue for three weeks in the winter of 1813. The campsite yielded a large piece of a ship’s iron yard brace entwined in the roots of a tree; a fragment of a scabbard made of bronze or brass; additional scraps of copper hull sheathing remade into survival tools; cooking fires; remains of fish and deer; Russian axes; and cannon grapeshot. The team also found rows of mismatched iron nails at the edge of the camp. The nails, oriented east to west, may have held together a coffin made of salvaged wood. The burial, thought to hold the remains of one of the two survivors of the wreck who died after reaching the island, has been left in place. For more on archaeology in Alaska, go to “Cultural Revival.”
