Sarah Unkel

SARAH UNKEL, then a graduate student at University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, received a grant in October 2021 to aid research on “Paleogenomic Insights on Birnirk Inuit Kinship and Social Organization within the Kugusugaruk Cemetery,” supervised by Dr. Dennis O’Rourke. Ancestral Iñupiat burial organization as it pertains to biological relatedness is not well understood. Population histories in northwest Alaska are richly documented within the archaeological and ethnohistoric records and suggest burials were placed where convenient, not necessarily near biological relatives. Well-contextualized burials affiliated with the Birnirk material culture (AD 650-1300) on the Alaska North Slope offer an opportunity to address this gap in our knowledge. This project utilized targeted enrichment to collect genomic data for 14 Birnirk individuals from Kugusugaruk, a multi-mound cemetery located near the contemporary community of Utqiaġvik, Alaska, to test whether biological relatedness influenced burial organization. Preliminary results demonstrate that first- and second-degree relatedness is not likely to be identified among individuals buried within Mounds 1 or 2. Seven maternal and seven paternal haplotypes have been detected thus far, suggesting mounds were not designated for a particular biological lineage. These findings align with expectations that biological relatedness was not a primary factor of Birnirk burial organization.