{"id":162652,"date":"2021-01-25T21:18:06","date_gmt":"2021-01-25T18:18:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/elusive-19th-century-alaskan-fort-located-using-radar-tech\/"},"modified":"2021-01-25T21:18:06","modified_gmt":"2021-01-25T18:18:06","slug":"elusive-19th-century-alaskan-fort-located-using-radar-tech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/elusive-19th-century-alaskan-fort-located-using-radar-tech\/","title":{"rendered":"#Elusive 19th century Alaskan fort located using radar tech"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Elusive 19th century Alaskan fort located using radar tech<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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Researchers from Cornell University and the National Park Service have pinpointed and confirmed the location of the remnants of a wooden fort in Alaska\u2014the Tlingit people’s last physical bulwark against Russian colonization forces in 1804\u2014by using geophysical imaging techniques and ground-penetrating radar.<\/p>\n


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The fort was the last physical barrier to fall before Russia’s six-decade occupation of Alaska, which ended when the United States purchased Alaska in 1867 for $7 million.<\/p>\n

The Tlingit built what they called Shiskinoow\u2014the “sapling fort”\u2014on a peninsula in modern-day Sitka, Alaska, where the mouth of Kasda Heen (Indian River) meets Sitka Sound at the Sitka National Historical Park.<\/p>\n

“The fort’s definitive physical location had eluded investigators for a century,” said co-author Thomas Urban, research scientist at Cornell. “Previous archaeological digs had found some suggestive clues, but they never really found conclusive evidence that tied these clues together.”<\/p>\n

To find Shiskinoow, Urban created a grid to see if the electromagnetic induction methods could spot the potential outline of the fort and then created a small grid for dragging the ground-penetrating radar. Urban’s modern tools picked up the fort’s unusual perimeter shape.<\/p>\n

“We believe this survey has yielded the only convincing, multi-method evidence to date for the location of the sapling fort, which is a significant locus in New World colonial history and an important cultural symbol of Tlingit resistance to colonization,” Urban said.<\/p>\n

In 1799, Russia sent a small army to take over Alaska in order to develop the fur trade, but the Tlingit successfully expelled them in 1802. Expecting the Russians to return, the Tlingit built a wooden fort over two years\u2014the trapezoidal-shaped Shiskinoow. The Tlingit armed it with guns, cannons and gunpowder obtained from British American traders.<\/p>\n

When the Russians returned in 1804, the Tlingit held them off for five days, but suffered a setback when a gunpowder supply being carried to the fort from storage across Sitka Sound blew up in a canoe. The Tlingit clans escaped Shiskinoow by night across Shee (Baranov Island) to Halibut Man Fort and the Russians then established a trading post at what is now Sitka.<\/p>\n

“A large-scale survey was necessary to convincingly rule out alternative locations for this historically and culturally significant structure,” said co-author Brinnen Carter of the National Parks Service.<\/p>\n\n

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Archaeologists verify Florida’s Mound Key as location of elusive Spanish fort\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Citation<\/strong>:
\n Elusive 19th century Alaskan fort located using radar tech (2021, January 25)
\n retrieved 25 January 2021
\n from https:\/\/phys.org\/news<\/a>\/2021-01-elusive-19th-century-alaskan-fort.html<\/p>\n

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