Nunagiak is an abandoned village at Point Belcher that dates to the prehistoric Thule culture, about 78 miles (126 km) southwest of Utqiaġvik and 15 miles (24 km) northeast of Wainwright, Alaska. The shoreline is a barrier beach rising 6 to 10 feet (2 to 3 m) above sea level, enclosing a series of lagoons that normally hold fresh water. Such barriers form when waves and longshore currents pile sand and gravel into ridges parallel to the coast, which then separate lagoons from the open sea. Inland, a gently sloping coastal plain is underlain by Cretaceous sandstone and covered with marine sand, silt and permafrost. Thaw-lake basins and escarpments mark former shorelines, recording where the sea once stood. The Nunagiak site consists of 13 mounds arranged along an old beach line about 700 feet (213 m) inland from the present shoreline of the Chukchi Sea. Its mounds accumulated over generations as new houses were built atop the ruins of old ones.

The Thule culture emerged in coastal Alaska around AD 1000, though a recent study of radiocarbon and tree-ring dates suggests the fully developed culture appeared on the coast only around AD 1250. From there it spread eastward across northern Canada, reaching Greenland in the 13th century. Its people were the forebears of today’s Iñupiat, Inuit and Yupik. The Thule whalebone house is one of the most striking archaeological features of the Arctic. Thule and Iñupiat dwellings were typically semi-subterranean and entered through a long passage. Builders lined these passages with upright bowhead whale jawbones, which created a cold trap that kept frigid air below the living floor. The position, size and amount of whalebone in a house signaled the wealth and status of its household. Whaling villages revolved around the umialik, or whaling captain, who owned the boat, recruited crews of typically six or seven men and provided for their families in exchange for their labor. In 1936, the archaeologist James A. Ford spent two weeks excavating at Nunagiak, mapping the mounds in detail and recovering Punuk-style objects from houses beneath some of them. American whalers entered the Chukchi Sea in 1848, and a trading post was later built near the village.

Mandibles from large adult bowheads, probably whales of 50 to 60 feet (15 to 18 m), once signaled the prestige of the household atop one of the largest mounds at Nunagiak. Those bones remain visible for several miles and now serve as a navigational marker. The site lies within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, according to Bureau of Land Management maps. Across the North Slope, coastal erosion has accelerated as warming permafrost, retreating sea ice and longer ice-free seasons expose sites that were once considered stable. Permafrost is warming because rising air temperatures and longer summers penetrate deeper into the ground each year, thickening the seasonally thawed layer above it and raising the temperature of the frozen ground beneath. At one North Slope site, coastal retreat averages about 33 feet (10 m) a year, and a single storm removed about half of Walakpa, an archaeological site near Utqiaġvik. Read more here and here. Explore more of Nunagiak and Point Belcher here: