Nunalleq Culture and Archaeology Center Digital Museum

This grant follows on from research grant AH/K006029/1 and networking grant AH/R014523/1

This project supports the development of an online 'digital museum' facilitating remote access to the internationally significant but remotely located Nunalleq archaeological collection. This will be realised through co-curation between the local Yup'ik community and Nunalleq archaeologists of an interactive website containing a selection of digitised artefacts from the collection, accompanying multi-vocal narrative and mixed-media outcomes.

The Nunalleq Project was initiated in 2009, and has since produced an archaeological collection of nearly 100,000 artefacts, by far the largest existing example of pre-contact Yup'ik material culture - and a crucial anchor for a wide range of local and non-local heritage and humanities research and educational efforts.The collection was returned to the descendant community of Quinhagak, a Native Yup'ik village in the Yukon-Kuskokwim (YK) Delta of Southwestern Alaska, in August 2018. It is now under the care of the local community, housed in the purpose built Nunalleq Culture and Archaeology Centre, the only native owned archaeological repository in the area and a direct outcome of AHRC grant AH/K006029/1.The quantity and quality of the archaeological material recovered at Nunalleq is exceptional and has provided an entirely new chapter in Alaska archaeology. Disseminating these significant findings and archaeological material to a wider audience is essential for ensuring the long-term impact of the project, as well as supporting the longevity and vitality of the Culture Center.

The collection, being housed in a remote location, while immediately accessible to the residents of Quinhagak, is difficult to access for people in the other 47 Native villages in the YK Delta - as well as the wider world outside the Yup'ik homeland. As such, digitising this collection is vital for wider engagement and dissemination and should be created on conditions which respond to the local needs to ensure that the descendant community retains authorship of their history. This project will take a collaborative approach to generating content and narrative for the digital museum, working in partnership with the local community in Quinhagak to curate and creatively respond to artefacts digitised using 3D scanning and photography for the online collection. This collaboration will be structured by a series of 4 workshops responding to themes identified by community members during the 'Living Heritage' workshops (AH/R014523/1) in Quinhagak in August 2018 as especially relevant to the community and their contemporary engagements with the archaeological material; (1)hunting and fishing (2)subsistence gathering (3)ceremony and celebration (4)identity and adornment. Selected artefacts will serve as inspiration for workshop activities and as catalysts for focussed storytelling, combining archaeological and local knowledge with hands-on activities to create engaging mixed-media content such as photo stories, short films, artefact replicas and interactive media.

By supporting our methodology of community co-curation in practice this grant will strengthen the impact of the existing research by connecting the contemporary lived experience and traditional knowledge of the Yup'ik community with archaeological science and interpretation. This approach of collaboratively creating public outreach reinforces the project's ethos of cultivating an equal partnership between academic practice and local community.

To date, the Nunalleq Project has not only produced world-class scientific research on pre-contact Yup'ik culture but has evidenced time and time again the strength of community collaboration through the work Quinhagak is doing to take charge of its story and share it with the wider world. Ultimately, the project is an ongoing demonstration of how and why we should be working to make archaeology relevant for people today.