Alutiiq Fish Trap Spotted From the Air in Alaska

KODIAK, ALASKA—KTOO Public Media reports that archaeologist Patrick Saltonstall of Alutiiq Museum spotted an Alutiiq fish trap during a recent helicopter survey of the Kodiak Archipelago. “I’d actually been there on survey and had found a village there and hadn’t seen the fish trap,” Saltonstall said. The trap is only the second to have been found in the area. Built some 500 years ago along the shoreline, the traps worked by allowing fish to enter their walls during high tide, but when the tide went out, the fish were stuck. Saltonstall also thinks rock spires, now inhabited by puffins, may have been used as defensive watchtowers. “They must’ve had a rope ladder they built to get up and down, and probably, they were hoisting baskets of food up,” he speculated. To read in-depth about archaeology in Alaska, go to “Cultural Revival.”