Jim Baichtal joined my party to On Your Knees Cave. This was my second trip to the cave and my first trip after learning the true antiquity of the site. I collected sediment samples for screening and pollen analysis from the areas where the 35,000 year old brown bear and the 42,000 year old black bear were found, and several small bear bones were found. I have not yet searched the fine screen remains. In another part of the cave I collected a jaw and ulna that I have identified as a small seal! The cave is some distance from the ocean, so I suspect that some carnivore (bear?) dragged it there. Its age is not yet known.

David Love and I spent two days screening the stratified sediments in Devil's Canopy Cave, and this time we sampled the sediments in place rather than in float. Each stratigraphic interval was screened and bagged separately, and this preliminary study will tell us the general distribution of fossil material in the deposit and thus aid us in doing a more thorough excavation in the future. It will take much of the current school year to sort through the screened remains, and I am trying to get funds from my school to hire student help.

David Love and a party of cavers located Kushtaka Cave (north of Sarkar along the El Capitan Passage) last year and brought it to my attention because of the presence of bear bones. Dave and I took a party to the cave by boat and did some initial mapping and sample collecting. It is one of the most difficult caves we have worked in (low, tight, wet), but it has now become one of the most significant because of the archaeological remains recovered. One of the bone fragments we collected turned out, when cleaned, to be the tip of a bone spear point. An obsidian shard was located at one of the cave entrances, and several bones in the entrance room I have identified as probably being domestic dog. The cave also contains the partly-buried remains of at least two black bears. Fortunately the spear point and bear bones can be radiocarbon dated and thereby provide a proper context for this site. I am working closely with archaeologist Jim Dixon on this, and he has funds for dating the spear point ASAP. Kushtaka Cave should provide excellent leverage for us in obtaining outside funding for our excavations.

Something else of significance has turned up from my excavation last year. I have been puzzled by a bone fragment from Bumper Cave that I couldn't ever match with bear, but during my Smithsonian trip I matched it perfectly with a metacarpal of caribou. This is the first discovery of caribou on Prince of Wales Island and will help us understand the development of pygmy caribou on the Queen Charlotte Islands. Jim Baichtal had previously asked me to keep an eye out for caribou remains, so we're really excited about this find.