Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas

Anne Jensen, an archaeologist who lives in Utqiaġvik.
The Iñupiat have lived along the North Slope of Alaska for almost a
thousand years. The site we were excavating, called Nuvuk, contained a
cemetery that held relatives and ancestors from many members of the
nearby town Utqiaġvik (known as Barrow when I was there), including of
the Bear Guard and the high school students helping with the dig.
Nuvuk was originally a village located on the very northernmost point of
the Point Barrow spit, which extends out between the Chuckchi Sea and the
Beaufort Sea. It has been occupied almost continuously for over a thousand
years, first by a group known to archaeologists as the Paleo-Inuit, and then
by Neo-Inuit (or simply Inuit) ancestors beginning about 800 CE.
The Nuvugmiut (people of Nuvuk) relocated their village southward at
least once before the 19th century, as the ocean storms eroded their northern
coast, bringing the sea increasingly closer to their homes. Gradually, more
and more Nuvugmiut moved to Utqiaġvik, and it surpassed Nuvuk in both
size and population by about the 19th century after establishing a hospital, a
school, and a Christian church. Nuvuk was not completely abandoned until
the mid-20th century; several elders living in Utqiaġvik had grown up in the
town (1). But by the time I came there to work, the only thing that remained
of the town on the surface of the ground was an expanse of gravel
interrupted briefly by scattered animal bones, little patches of grass, and
some lingering dwarf willows. The presence of vegetation, however slight,
is an important clue, as it often signals former areas of human activity that
had resulted in extra nutrients diffused into the gravel: middens and burials.
The close links between Utqiaġvik and Nuvuk made the residents of
Utqiaġvik understandably concerned about the fate of the cemetery on the
edge of the coast; the pressure from storms intensified by climate change
had rapidly increased the coast’s erosion rate. Ancestors’ remains, at rest for
nearly a thousand years, were now falling into the Arctic Ocean. Arctic
warming is thinning and melting regional sea ice, extending the ice-free
season. Without the protection of the sea ice, the big storm waves erode the
coastline much more rapidly (2). The elders of the community made the
decision to locate all the unmarked graves and transfer the remains to
another cemetery at a safe distance inland. With support from the
community and the National Science Foundation, Anne Jensen enlisted the