Ananiuliak Island

Anangula Island is a small island in the Fox Islands group of the Aleutian Islands of southwestern Alaska. The 1.4mi-long island is separated from Umnak Island by a channel about 0.93mi wide and consists of a mostly barren tundra landscape of volcanic ash.Ancient historyDuring the last Pleistocene ice age, Anangula and nearby Umnak Island formed the tip of a peninsula on the southern edge of the Bering land bridge and was covered by the Cordilleran ice sheet that dominated the northwestern portion of North America. This made the area unsuitable for both animal and human habitation until the ice sheet began to recede about 10-12,000 years bp. The first human settlement on Anangula (and the oldest known evidence of human activity in the Aleutians), a small village and core and blade site on the southeastern end of the island, was established about 8,400 years bp. Although estimates of how long the settlement was occupied range from under 100 years to more than 1,500 years, it is generally agreed that it was abandoned after a major eruption at the Okmok volcano 70km northeast on Umnak buried the area under nearly two metres of ash.