Storm Threatens Ancient Yup’ik Site in Alaska

The day after a major storm hit her village, Jenny Matthew wasn’t out looking for anything in particular. Then something in the debris caught her eye: a smooth wooden bowl that turned out to be centuries old.

A Storm Tears Through the Coast

Last October, the remnants of Typhoon Halong swept through western Alaska, flooding communities and displacing more than 1,000 people. In the coastal village of Quinhagak, the storm tore apart sections of the shoreline and scattered thousands of cultural objects from the nearby Nunalleq archaeological site across miles of coastline. According to a University of Washington grant report on the recovery effort, the storm surge removed roughly 60 feet of the site in a single night, leaving only a small untouched portion behind. Matthew’s wooden bowl, believed to have been carved between 400 and 600 years ago, was just one of thousands of objects the storm exposed.

Twenty Years of Careful Excavation

Archaeologists have worked at Nunalleq since 2009, after thawing permafrost first revealed significant numbers of artifacts in the early 2000s. Lead archaeologist Rick Knecht, of the University of Aberdeen, has directed the project alongside Quinhagak residents ever since. The frozen ground helped preserve organic materials that would otherwise have deteriorated, including hand-carved animals, wooden masks, sewing needles, grass rope, and pieces of kayaks. The site is also documented in connection with the Yup’ik Bow and Arrow Wars of the 17th century, giving it significance beyond its physical artifacts.

A Race Against a Rising Sea

The full Nunalleq site covers an area roughly equivalent to two Olympic-sized swimming pools, though the current emergency excavation focuses on a smaller section containing the remains of sod houses dating back approximately 400 to 500 years. Knecht said the team has barely kept ahead of coastal erosion since the dig began nearly 20 years ago, losing something like three feet of coastline a year as declining sea ice and thawing permafrost, both linked to human-caused climate change, make the shoreline increasingly vulnerable. After last October’s storm, seawater can now reach the excavation pit at high tide. Knecht described the effort to save the site as working in front of bulldozers, and said he would rather recover the artifacts than leave them for the waves.

Preserving a Community’s History

Recovered objects are conserved and studied at the Nunalleq Culture and Archaeology Center, where they remain accessible to descendants in Quinhagak and to the public. Elizabeth Church, director of Quinhagak Heritage Inc., which oversees the center and the excavation, said the collection carries deep significance for the community, connecting people directly to ancestors who adapted to their own period of dramatic environmental change five centuries ago, during the Little Ice Age. Seeing ancestral objects scattered across the beach after the storm only reinforced the community’s determination to protect them. With Alaska’s autumn storm season approaching, the team hopes to return for another excavation next summer, though funding for the work is still being raised.

Sources

This report draws on original reporting by NPR, published September 19, 2026.