arctic (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Savelle.

Prehistoric Thule Inuit in the Canadian Arctic were pre-eminent whalers, focussing on the bowhead whale, the largest prey species hunted by any prehistoric or historic hunter-gatherer society. The ethnographic literature provides a rich source of information dealing not only with the importance of bowheads in the diet of early historic bowhead-hunting Inuit societies, but also how social structure, ritual, symbolism and ideology were all centered on complex Thule-bowhead relationships. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bryan Hockett.

This is an abstract from the "McDonald Creek and Blair Lakes: Late Pleistocene-Holocene Human Activity in the Tanana Flats of Central Alaska" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. McDonald Creek contains identifiable faunal remains from two primary climatic and cultural time periods: (1) a Younger-Dryas aged occupation, and (2) a pre-Clovis aged occupation dating to ca. 14,000 cal BP. The ca. 14,000 cal BP occupation contains most of the well-preserved...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Walls. Mari Kleist. Remi Mereuze. Cecilia Porter.

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. The impact of climate change on heritage sites is a subject that is discussed with increasing urgency in arctic archaeology. Frequently used metaphors like “burning libraries” or “ticking clocks” capture the visceral feeling of loss experienced by both archaeologists and Inuit communities who witness destructions firsthand....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erik Gjesfjeld. William Brown. Ben Fitzhugh.

One of the persisting challenges in archaeological network analysis is how to incorporate both temporal and spatial information into network models generated from the archaeological record. This paper tackles this issue by introducing a protocol that places probabilistic weights on potential network connections between archaeological sites, combining time-varying probabilities quantifying contemporaneous site occupation and space-dependent probabilities based on geographic distance. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hollis Miller.

This is an abstract from the "Arctic Pasts: Dimensions of Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Sugpiaq (also known as Alutiiq) people have a more than 7,500-year history on the Kodiak Archipelago and in the surrounding areas. Through that long history, they adapted and invented new technologies, grew from small and mobile communities to large, settled villages, fought and traded with their neighbors, and created a vibrant coastal society....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Ryan. Elsa Cencig. Susan Lofthouse. Tommy Weetaluktuk.

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. In 2017, the Canadian government nominated eight places as candidates for future designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. One of those is Qajartalik, located off the coast of Nunavik, where more than 180 anthropomorphic faces were carved into soapstone outcrops between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Temple.

This is an abstract from the "Cooperative Bodies: Bioarchaeology and Non-ranked Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Social complexity is a term that often refers to the evolution of inequality in human populations along socioeconomic scales. This concept is historically traceable to unilineal evolutionary paradigms where reduced complexity is often defined based on othering in comparison to Western industrialized capitalism. This study...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melissa Ritchey. Heather Trigg.

This is an abstract from the "Mind the Gap: Exploring Uncharted Territories in Medieval European Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Viking Age, the Norse settled Iceland, a sub-arctic volcanic island at the climatic margin of cereal production. These settlers brought with them a distinctive subsistence economy involving animal husbandry and cereal production, most notably barley. Barley (Hordeum vulgare) has been noted by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha Walker. Kathyrn Kotar. James Savelle. Arthur Dyke.

The increasing accessibility of archaeological data from the Canadian Arctic has promoted a recent influx of macro-scale analyses. Drawing insights from our ongoing research project in the Foxe Basin region, we address some challenges regarding the synthesis of archaeological information, especially as it pertains to Paleo-Inuit studies. We discuss the importance of data quality and address issues of variability in occupation density, duration, and seasonality, both at the household and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Howard Higgins.

This is an abstract from the "Collaborative and Community-Based Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1974-76 I conducted ethnoarchaeological research among the Tahltan Indians of northwestern British Columbia. Like many native groups, from the early 1800’s into the 1940’s, the Tahltan were repeatedly decimated by epidemics. These killed disproportionately- with many old and very young dying. The loss of the elder women (the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Juliette Taieb. Claire Alix. Glenn P. Juday. Owen K. Mason. Christophe Petit.

This is an abstract from the "Arctic Pasts: Dimensions of Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The first and only millennial tree-ring chronology (AD 978–1941) in northwest Alaska was developed in the 1940s by archaeologist and dendrochronology pioneer J. L. Giddings. Constructed from living trees and archaeological samples from the Kobuk River valley, Giddings’s sequence established the chronology of the “Arctic Woodland Culture.” As Alaskan...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dennis G. Griffin.

St. Matthew and Hall islands are located in the Bering Sea, far from the Alaskan mainland. First discovered by the Russians between 1764 and 1766, little attempt was made to occupy or utilize these islands until 1809 when a fur hunting expedition was sent to St. Matthew to over-winter. In 2012, the USF&WS sent an archaeologist to attempt to locate the site of this earlier Russian hunting camp with archaeological investigations focused on the testing of an earlier identified cabin site on St....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anne Jensen.

Walakpa is an iconic Arctic site with spectacular preservation. Sadly, the once stable site began eroding rapidly in 2013, with ongoing erosion outpacing attempts to obtain traditional funding for excavation. The loss of cultural heritage led to growing international volunteer efforts, starting in 2015, with support from the landowner (an Alaska Native village corporation) and many individuals. I will discuss both the success and challenges of this type of project. Walakpa is only one of many...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ramona Harrison.

This is an abstract from the "Accelerating Environmental Change Threats to Cultural Heritage: Serious Challenges, Promising Responses" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The combination of deep sea fishing and dried fish production, and its distribution to inland consumers, is a distinctive and largely Nordic contribution to European diet and economy of eventual global impact in the 14th -17th centuries. One of the main questions is how and when this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tammy Buonasera. Antonio V. Herrera-Herrera. Carolina Mallol.

This is an abstract from the "Charred Organic Matter in the Archaeological Sedimentary Record" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Molecular and isotopic analyses of sediments from archaeological combustion features is a relatively new area of study. Applications have the potential to inform us about ancient pyro-technologies and patterns of animal exploitation in a wide range of human contexts but may be particularly informative with regards to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Schmuck. Risa J. Carlson. James F. Baichtal.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Shaheen area on the west coast of Prince of Wales Island, Southeast Alaska is a crenulated stretch of coastline protected from outside waters and fed by multiple freshwater streams. Paleoshoreline modeling following Carlson and Baichtal's predictive model (2015) suggested areas suitable for early Holocene settlement. Recent investigations have identified...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carola Flores-Fernandez. Veronica Alcalde. Laura Olguin. Jimena Torres. Diego Salazar.

Fishing was a crucial aspect in the lifeway of ancient coastal societies. Along the Pacific Coast, the appearance of shell fishhooks has been interpreted as part of different contexts of growing population, economic specialization, and social complexity, among others. Along the coast of the Atacama Desert (18° to 26° Lat. South), fishhooks on Choromytilus chorus shells (mussel) appear in archaeological sites located along 1.6 thousand kilometers of coast with dates around 7500 years BP. Around...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diana Ewing.

The production and functional properties of sinew thread are integral to the creation of Arctic Clothing. I focus on the creation of sinew thread from tendons and how production techniques affect thread usability in clothing production. Specifically, the strength and pliability of sinew thread. My reproduction of sinew threads is modeled upon the sinew used in extant Western Arctic garments in the collection of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. The strength of sinew thread is compared...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Walls. Pauline Knudsen. Naotaka Hayashi. Pivinnguaq Mørch.

This is an abstract from the "Accelerating Environmental Change Threats to Cultural Heritage: Serious Challenges, Promising Responses" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological sites in the Qaanaaq region of Northwest Greenland are under a variety of threats related to climate change. In addition to processes observed in other arctic contexts (increased coastal erosion and melting permafrost), the area has seen a dramatic surge in landslides...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Zeitlin.

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. Understanding how an agricultural society organized the production of iron and the trade of farming implements allows us to describe how they managed natural resources and non-agricultural activities as a community. In the North Atlantic region known for its ephemeral material culture, slags and other...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katelyn Braymer-Hayes. Shelby Anderson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Activities and production among ethnographic Arctic peoples were primarily divided by gender. This research examines whether or not gendered division of labor extended to use of space in Birnirk and Thule era (1300-150 BP) houses through analysis of ceramic distribution patterns. We assumed that ceramics are an appropriate proxy for women’s activities within...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Evan Holt. Brian Wygal. Kathryn Krasinski. Charles Holmes. Barbara Crass.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists have long-recognized that post-depositional processes can affect site deposits and that these processes may introduce substantial biases in the interpretation of sites and assemblages. A frequent assumption is that, barring stratigraphic disturbances, thin, well-defined stratigraphic layers are discrete and meaningful archaeological units, but...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Margaret Nelson. Thomas McGovern.

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 Kerttula had the vision and commitment to support an experiment: two interdisciplinary research teams working in dramatically different settings, striving to find valuable insights from cross-region, cross-case studies. One team from the North Atlantic islands (NABO) and another from the US Southwest (LTVTP) combined...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Sattler.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tanana Chiefs Conference (TCC) is a tribal consortium of 37 federally recognized Tribes and five village associations across subarctic Interior Alaska. Based in Fairbanks, the agency represents tribal membership across most of the Yukon River basin and the Upper Kuskokwim river basin. TCC manages a self-governance compact with the Bureau of Indian Affairs...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Oula Seitsonen.

This is an abstract from the "Empirical Approaches to Mobile Pastoralist Households" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Domestication of reindeer commenced amongst the Sámi of northern Fennoscandia in the 8th century AD, and was accompanied by significant cultural changes. This presentation focuses on diachronic changes in the land-use, inter- and intra-site settlement patterns and human-environmental relations. I focus especially on two pivotal...