(le Lagiina] ARCHEOLOGY, YAKUTAT BAY AREA, ALASKA 45 



some dwellinc: which we did not discover. Both the Storage House 

 and House 8 were destroyed by ftre, probably at the same time, and 

 it is tempting to suppose that this may have been set by a raiding 

 party. The fill in both belongs to the lower levels of Mound B. 



At a considerably later period, when Mound B had accumulated 

 over the ruins and was about half its present height. House Pit 1 

 was dug, presmnably for a large house. Still later, after the destruc- 

 tion or abandonment of the latter, a small dwelling (House 9) was 

 erected at one end of the large pit. Finally, after this in turn was 

 burned, another more substantial structure, which seems to have in- 

 cluded a room or place for sweat bathing, was built in House Pit 1, 

 over the remains of House 9. The fill in House Pit 1 and House 9 

 (and over the third structure) is apparently contemporaneous with the 

 upper levels of the midden in Mound B, and probably also with all of 

 the deposits forming Mound A. 



Unfortunately, the relative ages of the other structures at the site 

 could not be determined, although there was nothing to suggest a 

 long period of occupation of the site as a whole. House Pit 5 would 

 indicate a structure about the size of House 9; House Pits 2, 4, and 

 6 were probably for larger buildings, but smaller than those for which 

 House Pits 1 and 7 were presumably intended. House Pit 3 may 

 have been a bathhouse like House 8. This evidence, as well as the 

 house pits at Nessudat and Diyaguna'st, suggest that in the late 

 prehistoric and early historic period most Yakutat houses were in- 

 tended for occupancy by not more than four families, that some much 

 larger multifamily dwellings were built, as well as small houses 

 suitable for only one or two couples and their children. 



SMALLER SURFACE AND SUBSURFACE PITS 



In addition to the larger house pits, a number of depressions, about 

 5 to 12 feet in diameter and from 6 to 18 inches deep, were scattered 

 over the site (see map 7). These were called "Surface Pits," only 

 because they were visible before excavation, not because they had 

 been originally dug from the present surface. Thus, Surface Pit 1 

 was excavated when the top of Mound B was about 2 feet below its 

 present level; Sm-face Pit 6 when it was VA feet lower; and Surface 

 Pit 7 when it was about 1 foot lower. Some of these surface pits had 

 evidently been dug through earlier pits that were already filled with 

 rubbish, perhaps because this facilitated digging. In turn, they be- 

 came partially filled with midden material, generally the black rocky 

 midden, and also ^vith some gray sandy midden, together with scat- 

 tered lenses of shell, charcoal, and rocks. Unbroken strata over the 

 tops of most of these surface pits indicate that these were older than 

 the last period of occupation of the site. Some pits contained 



