Recovering the lost treasures of Ipiutak (Pt. Hope), Alaska

In the 1940s three archaeologists, two Americans and one Danish colleague, began to excavate on the north Alaskan coast at a place called Ipiutak. This site near Pt. Hope, Alaska, was the locale of a proto-Inuit [Eskimo] community active approximately 1500 YPB. The Ipiutak excavations, funded by the Works Projects Administration (WPA), produced an astonishing array of jade and ivory carvings declared the most amazing treasures ever found in the Arctic. At the start of WWII the two Americans archaeologists left the Pt. Hope excavations because of the war, leaving the Danish archaeologist to continue and complete the on-site work. One shipment of the artifacts went back to New York to be photographed, but on its return to Alaska, the ship it was on, an Army barge, sank en route to Juneau. There may have been a second barge from Pt. Hope, loaded with Ipiutak artifacts, lost not far offshore in the shallow ice-infested area of strong currents of the Bering Strait. A portion of the collections apparently ended up in the Danish National Museum, and a portion of these collections remained in the U.S., but a significant portion of the collections are apparently carefully packaged and intact on the seafloor within one or two shipwrecks. A multi-agency plan to face the significant challenges to the recovery of the Treasures of Ipiutak is presented, along with photographs of some of the treasures known to be on the seafloor