Beach Ridge Archeology

We are familiar with the idea that archeologists reach the remains of older cultures by digging deeper into the ground. The famous Arctic archeologist, J. Louis Giddings, used another technique; he simply walked farther back from the ocean beach. He found several localities in western Alaska where there were series of low ridges lying parallel to and behind the existing beach. Giddings reasoned that these ridges, each only a few feet high, were former beach crests. Each should be older than those between it and the sea, and each, Giddings hoped, would yield the remains of the people who lived on the beach crest at the time it represented the shoreline.

In 1958 Giddings and his coworkers began an investigation of the beach ridges at Cape Krusenstern, northwest of Kotzebue. They mapped a total of at least 114 beach ridges extending back two miles from the shore. These beaches were formed over the last 5000 years; on the average a new beach formed about every 40 to 50 years over this time span. The beach ridges revealed a continuous record of human occupation. Giddings was able to identify eight cultural stages, the oldest dating back to about 3000 B.C.

One of the major yields of the Krusenstern beach sequence came from Beach 53 occupied in 1800 B.C. Several house remains found there showed that the occupants had a culture unlike any found elsewhere in western Alaska but somewhat similar to cultural groups living in the Great Lakes region in 3200 B.C. and afterwards. The full story of Giddings' archeological work in western Alaska is contained in his highly readable book, Ancient Man of the Arctic, published in 1967 just after his death. It is available now in Alaskan book stores.