Our past two days were spent on Makanrushi, a (relatively) tiny little speck of an island off to the west side of the main part of the archipelago (see map). It was a primary target of Dr. Nakagawa's vulcanology team. And our archaeology survey team didn't have anything better to do, so we tagged along for the ride. As small as Makanrushi is, and as far "off the beaten path" as it is, our anticipation was that there would be little or no archaeological material to be found.But boy were we wrong!
After spending a couple hours circumnavigating the island looking for the right combination of safe landing spots and right landforms for archaeological sites, we finally ended up at the south end of the island. We knew ahead of time that the south 1/3 of the island was dominated by a landform created by a landslide "awhile ago." How long ago, we weren't quite sure-that is actually one of the questions Nakagawa's team is hoping to answer. But they initially guesstimated that it was thousands of years old-so not likely to have affected the archaeological record too much.
Even so, it's difficult to predict what any given landslide feature will look like. If the sediment is mostly fine-grained, the feature could end up low and flat, like we experienced at Kharimkotan. But if the sediment has lot of cobbles and boulders in it, like at Blackiston Beach, then the modern surface might be really contorted. Well, it turns out the landslide on the south side of Makanrushi is somewhere in between. For the most part, the landform is low and flat, and covered with a lush meadow of mostly grass. But there are also occasional "erratics," or large, isolated boulders partially or completely covered by grass.
And there's also a nice terrace about 5-7 m above sea level along the coast. Unlike Blackiston Bay, this bay is fairly well protected. And in this particular bay, it seems that people built their pit houses on the terraces, rather than at the headlands (which don't have many level surfaces on this island).
One of the benefits of the location of this island somewhat "off the beaten path" is that there does not appear to have been much, or maybe even any military presence here. Also, Nakagawa's team suspects that the landslide is more on the order of 1000 years old. That means that the house pits are relatively recent and, as a consequence, still relatively clear in outline.
So as I discussed in my last posting, we walked around and looked for these depressions, just like on Onekotan. And we did end up falling into a few of them. But fortunately, not too many. Yes, I mentioned before that it tends to be a soft landing. But in this particular case, many of the insides, and outside edges, of the house pits were covered with stands of stinging nettles (see photo)-not the kind of plant you would want to land head-first on!
The archaeology survey team examines the soil probe for evidence of cultural material from the center of a probable house pit. Most of the plants visible in the photo are either grass or stinging nettles. Left to right: Volodya Golubtsov, Natasha Slobodina, Dima Chvigian.
But the nettles are actually a really important part of this story, their well-earned reputation for stinging aside. Nettles grow best on nutrient-enriched soils, especially soils that have been enriched by decomposing shell and bone. So when I saw the nettles, I got really really excited about the possibility of finding preserved midden deposits underneath. And sure enough, just about everywhere we found nettles, the soil probe brought up fragments of shell or bone! In some parts of the world this is not a big deal. But preserved midden deposits have been extremely difficult for us to find in the Kurils, so for us to find several on Makanrushi is very exciting! We were only able to excavate a 1 m X 1 m "test pit" into one of the middens on Makanrushi, but it was extremely productive, yielding several bags of bones, lots of charcoal, and even a few bone tools (not sure of their functions yet.....)
We hope to get lots of different kinds of information out of the bones and shells we recover from any middens we excavate. First and foremost, of course, is the species composition. I've only barely glanced at the Makanrushi sample (it was only excavated yesterday), but I can tell right away that it is dominated by large fish, mostly cod (Gadus macrocephalus) and halibut (Hippoglossus stenolepis). There are also a few bones from Irish Lords in there, but I haven't seen any Atka mackerel bones (yet).
Any guesses what the crew members were catching from the deck of Iskatel IV? In my last "Ask the Team" response, I talked about how very little had changed in the sampling of fish at Chirinkotan vs. Ekarma. Now we get a look at what happens when several factors change at the same time!
First of all, the habitat at Makanrushi is a little bit different than at either Chirinkotan or Ekarma-there is much less kelp around (at least where we were anchored), and I suspect that the substrate (i.e., the stuff on the bottom) is a bit different. In any case, the change was almost immediately apparent to the folks fishing. They started out with the same gear as before, and caught a couple of Atka mackerel. But then they started catching really big cod, so everybody changed gear and moved up to larger hooks (larger bait attracts larger fish). Here's what the species composition looked like after the first hour or so: Atka mackerel: 15 Cod: 17 Halibut: 2 Sculpins (a mix of Irish Lords and great sculpins, Myoxocephalus polyacanthacephalus, one of my favorite scientific names): 13
There is one other factor that was different in this situation that we wouldn't have known about if we hadn't cruised around the island our first morning. Several kilometers away from where the ship was anchored, we encountered a really amazing feeding aggregation of Atka mackerel. I can't say that I've studied this species a lot, but this was like nothing I've ever heard of. There were hundreds, if not thousands of fish right at the surface feeding on swarms of small shrimp or copepods (see photo).
A school of Atka mackerel swims away as the boat approaches. The fish were in dense aggregations at the surface feeding on swarms of shrimp or copepods. Still image captured from video.
Their fins were sticking out of the water all over the place! The swarms seem to have been concentrated by two intersecting currents, and the fish (as well as hundreds of fulmars) were capitalizing on it. I kept expecting a group of sea lions, or maybe even a small whale, to come cruising through the feeding aggregation for some easy pickings. But, for better or for worse, that didn't happen.
So that wraps up our quick trip to Makanrushi. We just picked up Dr. Rybin's vulcanology team from the north end of Onekotan, and are headed to the south end of Blackiston Bay to pick up Jody's geology team. Jody's two students, Bre MacInnes and Andy Ritchie have each written a guest journal entry, so I'll probably get those posted in the next day or so.
And then we pick up Ben and Dr. Shubin from Ekarma-we have had almost no communication with them other than our twice daily SAT phone calls to say "all is well, g'bye." Hopefully they've had a productive 10 days. And we may get another guest journal entry from Laska!
--Dr. E