{"id":65318,"date":"2025-11-12T07:28:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T07:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/?p=65318"},"modified":"2025-11-12T13:39:51","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T13:39:51","slug":"how-climate-change-is-threatening-indigenous-yupik-heritage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/2025\/11\/12\/how-climate-change-is-threatening-indigenous-yupik-heritage\/","title":{"rendered":"How climate change is threatening Indigenous Yup’ik heritage"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On 12 October, 2025, Typhoon Halong reached the shores of Southwestern Alaska, with devastating consequences for many of the Indigenous communities living here. Whole villages were destroyed and forced to evacuate<\/a>. The Yup\u2019ik village of Quinhagak was relatively lightly hit, but c. 20m of coastal tundra was eroded by the raging sea \u2013 taking with it a large part of the ancestral village of Nunalleq, an archaeological site that has been the focus of collaborative research for the past 16 years<\/a>. The threats from climate change have loomed over the site since the decision to excavate was taken by the village, with support from the village Elders, in 2009. Intensified storminess, decreasing sea-ice, rising sea levels, and not least melting permafrost, all have a detrimental effect on well-preserved coastal archaeological sites in the Arctic and sub-Arctic, many of which are still undiscovered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following the typhoon, thousands of artefacts were scattered along the Bering Sea beach north of Quinhagak \u2013 but residents began to collect them and bring them to the local museum, and many volunteered to work with archaeologist Rick Knecht, who flew into the village to help with the recovery. Around 1,000 artefacts were salvaged before the ground froze for the winter, putting an end to the rescue effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Excavations have revealed that Nunalleq was a coastal village inhabited between CE 1570 and 1675. The Nunalleq excavations have given us substantial new insights into Yup\u2019ik life before European arrival to Alaska. The collection of nearly 200,000 objects, by far the largest collection of precontact Yup\u2019ik material in the world, is housed in the Nunalleq Museum in Quinhagak, that opened in 2018. Results from the excavations are also accessible in an online museum exhibition: the Nunalleq Digital Museum<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The online exhibition presents a shared story between archaeology and local knowledge, between past and present, highlighting the continuity of Yup\u2019ik traditions and contemporary connections with the past. For those who wish to explore archaeological artefacts further, an accessible catalogue contains over 6,000 objects, labelled in both Yup\u2019ik and English, displayed as photographs or 3D scanned images.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nunalleq\u2019s fate puts the spotlight on the acute threat climate change poses to Yup\u2019ik heritage, and generally to all archaeological sites in the circumpolar north. Following the typhoon, we are working on including some of the artefacts rescued from the beach in the digital catalogue. Additionally, we are looking to update the museum with a page highlighting the detrimental effects of climate change on archaeological sites in the Arctic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When spring comes and the ground thaws, artefact recovery will continue at Quinhagak. We are currently seeking funding to undertake a more substantial intervention over the summer. Archaeological excavations made it possible to discover the story of Nunalleq before the sea took it – but sites like these exist all over the Arctic, and most of their stories will never be told.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Image Caption: Fragment of a wooden mask on the beach, one of many artefacts rescued by volunteers from Quinhagak following the typhoon. Photo by Rick Knecht.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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‘Nunalleq Digital Museum: multi-vocal narration of a Yup’ik past’<\/a> by Charlotta Hillerdal, Alice Watterson, Lonny Alaskuk Strunk, Jaqueline Nalikutaar Cleveland and John Anderson is out now open access in Antiquity.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 12 October, 2025, Typhoon Halong reached the shores of Southwestern Alaska, with devastating consequences for many of the Indigenous communities living here. Whole villages were destroyed and forced to evacuate. The Yup\u2019ik village of Quinhagak was relatively lightly hit, but c. 20m of coastal tundra was eroded by the raging sea \u2013 taking with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":823,"featured_media":65321,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2263,6,7],"tags":[2470,6780,352,6677,519],"coauthors":[12018],"class_list":["post-65318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archaeology","category-humanities","category-social-sciences","tag-antiquity","tag-aqy","tag-archaeology","tag-climate-and-sustainability","tag-climate-change"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/823"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65318"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65336,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65318\/revisions\/65336"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65318"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=65318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}