United States of America
Sadie Cove – 2017

First of all, the operation involved extensive bibliographical research. The latter have been greatly facilitated by the Alaska Office of History and Archaeology, which granted Sébastien Perrot-Minnot access to its databases, and by Janet Klein, a scientist who has dedicated herself to studying the past of Kachemak Bay.

The field work was carried out on August 24th 2017, with the collaboration of Janet Klein and the kind help of Alaska’s Sadie Cove Wilderness Lodge owners, Randi and Keith Iverson. The shelter was carefully examined, measured and photographed; the decorated wall was photographed for a photogrammetric survey; a systematic survey was undertaken on the site and in its immediate surroundings (where other rock shelters are located); and an oral survey was conducted among the few inhabitants of the area.

The pictures of the inside of the shelter were later improved with the Photoshop software and the Dstretch plugin, used with the ImageJ software. The rock paintings already known were thus better documentated, while new ones were identified. 3D models of the decorated wall were also developed by Nicolas Saulière (computer graphics designer, Éveha) using Photoscan software. The generated images were explored using Meshlab software.

Finally, in-depth analyses were led to place the Sadie Cove site in the context of Kachemak Bay pre-European archaeology, and to compare its paintings with other rock art sites in Alaska and on the northwest coast of North America, taking into account each specific archaeological context.