A collection of historic finds rests in the bed of Buck Santistevan’s pick-up truck. Donning a neon vest and hard hat, they point out the items they have found so far.
“That’s the exhaust. This is the mooring chain. That’s the keyhole anchor.”
Each of these objects were buried under decades of sand and mud packed down by tides along Sitka’s coast. They’re coated in chunks of rust, except for a shiny, galvanized hubcap from a 1940s Oldsmobile Santistevan picks up from the truck bed.
“I mean, for having been in the water for probably 70-ish years, it looks pretty good, doesn’t it? Good job, Oldsmobile,” they say as they place the hunk of metal back down.
Santistevan is the archeologist on site for the Alaska Department of Transportation’s extension of the Sitka Seawalk. The pedestrian walkway runs alongside Crescent Harbor and through the heart of downtown. When construction wraps on this phase, it will stretch from the library to the O’Connell Bridge, but in the meantime Santistevan is keeping a close watch below the surface.
“If they punch a hole in the ground — whether it’s with a teaspoon, a shovel, or a giant bucket excavator — I’m here to put eyes on every single scoop that comes out,” they say.
Santistevan is there to observe changes in color or composition of the soil in the intertidal zone. Discontinuities can point to an artifact, like what’s sitting in their truck bed.
“As the project archeologist, I have the authority to say, ‘Hey, I want to monitor here,’ or ‘Hey, I know we’re supposed to monitor here, but in this context, I don’t see that we’re going to find anything else, so I don’t need to monitor anymore.'”
There are five areas Santistevan has to monitor. They say this land is like a layer cake with slices of Tlingit, Russian, American, and military history.
“When I get up and come to work every day, and I’m standing in this ancient and dramatic landscape, I just feel so lucky,” they say. “But it’s not really luck, is it? It’s hard work.”
It’s hard work, but also the consequence of trying something new. In college, Santistevan studied literature. After completing their required courses, they still needed a few general electives. On a whim, they chose Anthropology 101.
“The Kool-Aid is very strong in there. I was absolutely captivated.”
They remember the day their professor chiseled obsidian into an arrowhead using antlers and leather. This is an ancient process known as flintknapping.
“It blew my mind that I was watching this guy do something that people had been doing for thousands and thousands and thousands of years.”
Santistevan quickly declared anthropology as their second major. While still an undergrad, they joined a graduate student doing archeology research at the mouth of the Amazon River in Brazil. That researcher advised Santistevan to pursue a master’s degree, and eventually a PhD, in archaeology at the University of Florida.
“I don’t know how I ended up at a tropical university doing work in the tropics,” Santistevan says, “because I don’t like heat and I don’t like bugs.”
Santistevan prefers the cool climate of the Pacific Northwest. But after working as a contractor for 20 years, it might be time for a change.
They recall the years they spent on site, “standing out in the sideways driving rain with 14 layers on, shivering, my teeth chattering, thinking to myself one day it won’t be me, I’ll be able to hire somebody to come out here and do this for me.”
Santistevan says they want to continue to manage their contracting company but they also have their sights set on opening a bakery. They’d sell pão de queijo, a Brazilian cheese bread they ate when working in the Amazon, but incorporate flavors of the Pacific Northwest like marionberry.
When they’re not working, Santistevan is experimenting with new recipes or writing. Archeology requires documenting, analyzing, and reporting any findings to different stakeholders. But Santistevan also dabbles in creative writing and poetry, and they can’t help but notice the parallels.
“Even if I’m just pulling up an Oldsmobile hubcap over here, there’s a whole story around that goes for hundreds of years and sometimes thousands of years in each direction,” they say.
Whether Santistevan is studying a construction site or penning their next poem, they love to craft stories from the things they dig up.
