Unearthing data from excavations done decades ago and connecting to today’s communities

The ancestors of Alaska's native people began using local copper resources to craft complex tools about 1,000 years ago. More than a third of all copper objects found by archaeologists in this region were excavated from a single site, called the Gulkana site.

This is the site I have been studying for the past four years as a Ph.D. student at Purdue University. Despite its importance, the Gulkana site is not well known.

To my knowledge it is not mentioned in any museum. Locals, including Alaska's indigenous Ahtna people, who are descended from the site's original inhabitants, may recognize the ...