Tikchik village: a nineteenth century riverine community in ... - Cluster

342 FIELDIANA: ANTHROPOLOGY, VOLUME 56vided relatively little specific information about the site itself. Thissituation can be said to be characteristic of the historical source materialfor all southwestern Alaska at all periods of time. There ismuch general impressionistic data but when it comes to specific, narrowstudies in depth, this type of data is wanting. Of course, virtuallynone of the historical material utilized in this study was collected,organized, and written by a professional historian and none at all byan anthropologist. It was collected by individuals who found themselvesin the Nushagak River region in the performance of theirduties as priests, government officials, school teachers, cannery workers,etc., and their reports, naturally enough, are oriented aroundtheir jobs. Thus a Russian Orthodox priest will describe a trip upthe Nushagak River, note the fact that baptisms and other religiousrites were performed in several villages and give no other informationat all. In this case, the ethnohistorian will consider himselffortunate if the priest actually gives the names of the villages hevisited. At least then it is possible to say that such-and-such a villagewas occupied at such-and-such a time. It is certain that theseproblems are familiar to all ethnohistorians regardless of the area inwhich they have worked. They are mentioned here only to illustratethe fact that, in its own way, historical source material is not a muchmore satisfactory research tool for the study of cultural change innineteenth century southwestern Alaska than archaeology and ethnography.All three are necessary if anything remotely approachinga complete picture is going to be achieved. The question might beasked, however, whether we are using these three research tools in amanner so as to extract the maximum amount of data from them.As far as archaeology and the use of informants is concerned,it isdifficult, at the present time, to see how refined techniques could producemore information. If there is no stratigraphic distinction betweenRussian and American levels in a site, for example, not eventhe most refined excavation technique will create one. It is true, ofcourse, that a more skillful handling of aged informants might producemore data and I have discovered that as my own informationincreases, my more sophisticated questions elicit increasingly sophisticatedanswers. But it is perhaps in the area of historical sourcesthat we have the most to learn as far as maximum usefulness is concerned.It is becoming increasingly necessary that we go not onlybeyond published sources but even beyond the standard archival repositories.And even in this latter field there is still a great deal to do.The records of the Russian-American Company, handed over to the