The anthropology of Kodiak Island

Hrdlicka, Ales

Book

The anthropology of Kodiak Island

AMS Press • New York • Published In 1975 • Pages:

By: Hrdlicka, Ales.

Abstract
This is a photocopy reprint of the 1944 edition. The Koniag were an important and little known population of American aboriginals. They were the occupants of Kodiak Island and the neighboring coast of southwest Alaska, at the time of European contact and constituted Hrdlicka's opinion, 'one of the largest native American groups of the time' (p. 19). The Koniag themselves, however, were relative latecomers to the island, arriving only 300-400 years before the Russians. They displaced a physically and culturally distinct population, the Pre-Koniag, which had occupied the island for perhaps the last 2000 years (pp.320-322). This monograph is divided into 4 parts. The first (pp. 9-92) reviews the ethnohistorical literature, principally Russian, and presents a basic descriptive ethnography based on the observations of Europeans in contact with the Koniag from the discovery of the island in 1763, to those of visitors of the mid 19th century. The second part (pp. 93-134) is a brief account of Hrdlicka's archaeological surveys of Kodiak and the neighboring area. The third part and the bulk of the book (pp. 135-352) is an almost day-by-day account of his archaeological work on the island. It is well illustrated but is little more than field notes and yearly summaries. The archaeological evidence remains largely unanalyzed (see 2:Heizer), and the cultural context of this material is not clear. The fourth part (pp. 353-434) concerns the physical anthropology of the Koniag and Pre-Koniag. It includes measurements of the full-blooded Koniag and the excavated skeletons. The skeletal remains are compared with American whites (as a standard), and Eskimos, Alutes, and Alaskan Indians in order to determine racial affiliations. Hrdlicka concludes that the Koniag are 'an anthropologically distinct unit widely different in many respects from the Eskimo, considerably closer to yet somewhat distinct from the Alutes' (p. 394). He concludes that the Pre-Koniag were most likely part of the larger Algonquin branch of the American natives. Two appendices covering stone and bone artifacts (pp. 434-474) and the archaeological remains of plant and animal life (pp. 475-481) are also included. The ethnohistorical section is probably the most valuable part of the source in terms of providing a description of a living culture.

Maps

Anthropometry

Descriptive somatology

Racial identification

Physiological data

Prehistory

Acculturation and culture contact

Lithic industries

Dwellings

Heating and lighting equipment

Alutiiq

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