arctic (Other Keyword)
101-125 (170 Records)
This is an abstract from the "From Hard Rock to Heavy Metal: Metal Tool Production and Use by Indigenous Hunter-Gatherers in North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The earliest metal use in the Eastern North American Arctic comes from the Pre-Dorset period (ca. 5000–2500 cal BP). However, evidence for the material being used regularly and outside its immediate source regions emerges millennia later in the Late Dorset period (ca. 1500–700...
Metallurgy, Shamanism, and Ideographic Currency in Bering Strait: Scythian Descent? (2023)
This is an abstract from the "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Late Holocene Bering Strait acted as a filter, marked by intermittent material and technological cross-strait transfers; first of obsidian, ca. 3000 BCE, storage or serving ceramics adopted ca. 1000 BCE, of metallurgic iron ca. 200 CE, rare cast-bronze objects ca. 1150 CE, armor...
Micro-residues: Developing a Geochemical Baseline for Archaeological Analysis at Temyiq Tuyuryaq (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Temyiq Tuyuryaq: Collaborative Archaeology the Yup’iit Way" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Geochemical analysis of anthropomorphic sediments in a household context have contributed to our understanding of ‘home-making’ including spatial organization and use of residential space (e.g. Frink and Goodale). Geochemical signatures can identify micro-residues such as calcium and phosphorous, suggesting activities that have...
More Than Just a Pot: The Social Life of Soapstone Vessels among the Southern Labrador Inuit (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Social Archaeology in the North and North Atlantic (SANNA 3.0): Investigating the Social Lives of Northern Things" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout the Canadian Arctic and Greenland soapstone (steatite) oil lamps and cooking pots were a common and crucial component of Inuit daily life. Maintaining a houseful involved elaborate behavior structured around the hearth and its technical and social components....
Necrontology: Housing the Dead in Precontact Labrador and Greenland (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Individual Bodies to Bodies of Social Theory: Exploring Ontologies of the Americas" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Conventional treatment of the dead varied substantially across the Inuit world. Bodies might be deposited in carefully constructed cairns next to settlements or more simply exposed on the land or sea ice. It also varied locally depending on understandings of the afterlife, how individuals were...
New Evidence for the Timing of Arctic Small Tool Tradition Coastal Settlement in Northwest Alaska (2016)
This paper presents the results of a survey of the oldest beach ridges located on Cape Espenberg in Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, Alaska. The goals were to locate and test Arctic Small Tool tradition (ASTt) sites to develop a coastal settlement chronology and to establish whether marine resources were exploited. At the outset of this project four ASTt sites were known at Cape Espenberg, two with associated radiocarbon dates. Upon completion, ten new ASTt sites with eleven radiocarbon...
New Insights into the Consumption of Cultigens for "Archaic" Age Populations in Cuba: The Archaeological Site of Playa el Mango, Rio Cauto, Granma (2018)
The use of cultigens and wild plants by pre-historic populations has been well established for many regions of the circum-Caribbean and Greater Antilles. However, in the case of Cuba, the largest island in the Caribbean, the evidence is scarce. In this paper, we examine the population of Playa El Mango (Cauto Region, Eastern Cuba), traditionally understood by Cuban archaeologists as "fisher-gatherers", to examine subsistence practices using a combination of starch evidence from dental calculus,...
New Interpretations of Medieval Norse Artifacts from the Tasikuluulik (Vatnahverfi) Area, South Greenland (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SANNA v2.2: Case Studies in the Social Archaeology of the North and North Atlantic" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The goal in this Master’s Thesis is to collect and systematize data from eight medieval Norse sites in the Tasikuluulik peninsula and use these data to compare with past interpretations regarding the use and purpose of these Norse sites. In past research projects, the eight sites under investigation have...
A New Radiocarbon Dated Record of Holocene Weapon Technology from The Trail Creek Cave Site, Seward Peninsula, Alaska (2018)
The Trail Creek Caves site on the Seward Peninsula in western Alaska was excavated by Helge Larsen in 1949-1950, and is among the most important archaeological sites in central Beringia. It contains a lengthy, rich and well-preserved paleoecological and archaeological record dating to the late Pleistocene, and the largest collections of mid-Holocene age organic tools from the region. However, poor chronological and stratigraphic controls have hampered the interpretive value of the site. New...
No Digging within 50 Meters (2018)
Fort Wainwright Training Lands in Central Alaska have been dedicated to the army mission since the early 1960s with consistent military training to support worldwide deployment. Fort Wainwright’s Donnelly Training Area encompasses over 25,000 acres of maneuver terrain specifically designed for live-fire training of the 1/25th Stryker Brigade. This training area is ideal for missions pertaining to mobilization, off road combat vehicle exercises, and excavation of maneuver positions. The terrain...
No Empty Landscapes: Livelihood, Agency, and Transformation in Early Inuit South Greenland (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Climate and Heritage in the North Atlantic: Burning Libraries" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Kujataa—South Greenland—constitutes a verdant environmental niche and was one of the most populous regions in Arctic Greenland, occupied by the Norse between ca. AD 985 and 1450 and Inuit in the following centuries until today. Whereas Norse society has been much studied, Inuit archaeology and history in Kujataa has been...
No Man Is an Island: Death and Burial on the Island of Haffjarðarey (2018)
During the 13th century Iceland became a major hub of the North Atlantic fishing industry sparking international conflict over fishing rights between mercantile interests from Norway, Denmark, England, the Netherlands and Northern Germany. From ca. 1200 - 1563 the Catholic Church and cemetery on the island of Haffjarðarey served as the burial place for the large geographic region of Eyjahreppur in western Iceland. The church and cemetery were closed during the Lutheran Reformation and the...
Norse Exploitation of Wooden Resources in North America: Determining Wood Provenance Using Isotopic Analysis (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SANNA v2.2: Case Studies in the Social Archaeology of the North and North Atlantic" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From historic sources we know the inhabitants of the North Atlantic islands relied on importations of timber from Northern Europe in order to supplement their resource deficit. In the case of the Greenland Settlements, we know Norse Greenlanders organized expeditions to North American shores where they...
Norse Textiles at the Western Edge of the North Atlantic. (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Celebrating Anna Kerttula's Contributions to Northern Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Anna Kertulla’s vision of Arctic research incorporated a desire to see female scholars succeed and work on issues pertaining to women’s lives in the North. Three NSF-funded grants from Arctic Social Sciences, focusing on textiles as women’s production, used over 1500 textiles from Iceland, Greenland, the Faroes, and Scotland...
Nuvuk, Birnirk, Utqiaġvik, Walakpa and Beyond: All Those Sites Will Soon Be Gone (2015)
These are all classic sites, but many of them were last excavated a half century or more ago. New questions and new methods require types of data that was not collected back then; additional excavation with finer provenience control is also needed. Such work has been undertaken at sites like Cape Espenberg, but only at the Nuvuk cemetery in North Alaska. The apparent assumption by those not working in the area has been that the sites were stable, and that there was no hurry. That is no longer...
Objects of Adaptation: The Role of Play Objects in Adaptation to Environmental Change in the North Atlantic Islands (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and Landscape Learning for a Climate-Changing World" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We present a comparative analysis of Norse and Thule play objects and practices (i.e., toys and games) in the North Atlantic islands, focusing on their role in enculturation and information transmission between generations. When considered together with environmental records, this information offers insights into processes...
Of Fish and Plague: Death as Economic Opportunity at the Medieval Fishing Station of Gufuskálar, Iceland (2018)
The high morbidity (50% or greater) of Iceland’s Black Death in 1404 C.E. disrupted a rigidly hierarchical Icelandic social order and led to an inability to enforce social and legal constraints on Iceland’s labor classes. This newly untethered and mobile lower class searched for avenues for wealth creation previously unavailable. One avenue, in the century following Iceland’s Black Death, was through fishing and fish exports. During this period, previously tightly restricted fish exports...
Of Monsters and Men: Material Culture, Movement, and Symbolism at Surtshellir, a Western Icelandic Viking Age Ritual Site (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Social Archaeology in the North and North Atlantic (SANNA 3.0): Investigating the Social Lives of Northern Things" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the course of 850 years, Surtshellir—a massive lava cave in western Iceland’s rugged interior—was variously described as a geological wonder, a shelter for outlaws, an abode of ghosts and spirits, a tourist's dream, a place of torture, the wilderness, an archaeological...
Perspectives from a Digital Season and New Opportunities of Knowledge Co-production for Arctic Archaeology (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Arctic Pasts: Dimensions of Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Impact of the COVID-19 epidemic has been acute in the Arctic, where logistics and community collaborations are time sensitive. Having canceled our 2020 field season in Avanersuaq, Greenland, we decided to continue collaborative work online, while striving to bring Inughuit partners into the process of interpretation. In this paper, we present outcomes...
Pitquhivut Ilihaqtaa: Learning about Our Culture (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Arctic Pasts: Dimensions of Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeology in Inuit Nunangat (northern Canada) has a long and varied history of interactions between Inuit communities and "southern" researchers. This paper is about one long-standing example of a successful relationship between an Inuit organization, the Pitquhirnikkut Ilihautiniq / Kitikmeot Heritage Society (PI/KHS) of Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, and...
“Place for a Walrus to Haul Out”: Marine Mammals and Polynya Archaeology in Northern Foxe Basin, Nunavut, Arctic Canada (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Across Inuit Nunangat (the traditional Inuit territories of what is now Canada), the Little Ice Age (LIA) climate change episode likely resulted in significant changes in seasonal sea-ice abundance, thereby affecting relatively delicate coastal food webs. In this paper, we present the results-to-date of recent survey and excavation at Uglit (NfHd-1), a...
Political Ecology Materialized in a Medieval Icelandic Landscape (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Materializing Political Ecology: Landscape, Power, and Inequality" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Past ecological and political-economic changes are embedded in the materiality of the landscape, and investigating correlations between such changes can suggest how relationships between ecology and economy were structured and managed within past societies. Iceland was first settled in the late ninth century by wealthy...
The Porcupine Tail Site Complex and the Concentration of the Archaeological Record on Isolated Hills of Interior Alaska (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology of Alaska, the Gateway to the Americas" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological record in any landscape tends to be differentially concentrated on specific landforms, because such landforms favor both the recurrence of human activities over successive periods of time and the postdepositional preservation of their material traces. In this paper we present results from recent excavations at two...
Pottery use in Alaskan prehistory: an organic residue analysis approach (2015)
Despite major environmental challenges, pottery was manufactured and used by Palaeo- and Neo-Eskimos in Alaska for millennia. To better understand why pottery was used by Alaskan hunter-gatherers, the authors have undertaken a number of site-based organic residue analyses that provide direct biomolecular and isotopic evidence for the contents of past pots. The ubiquitous presence of aquatic biomarkers, along with compound specific isotope data, show that pottery use at the sites was consistently...
Precontact Inuit Watercraft and the Hunter-Prey Actantial Hinge (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Negotiating Watery Worlds: Impacts and Implications of the Use of Watercraft in Small-Scale Societies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Maritime harvesting from watercraft and sea ice was the foundation of precontact Inuit economy throughout the Eastern Arctic, and small watercraft also figured in locally important terrestrial caribou hunts. Boats were everywhere essential to work, travel, and trade during the open...