North America: Arctic and Subarctic (Geographic Keyword)
101-125 (168 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Late Pleistocene Stemmed Points across North America: Continental Questions and Regional Concerns" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Large, shoulderless stemmed bifacial projectile points are a hallmark of the late Pleistocene age Sluiceway complex represented in more than two dozen sites northern Alaska. This paper discusses the dating of this technology and potential relationship to fluted projectile point and...
Late Pleistocene Technological Organization at Shég’ Xdaltth’í’, Central 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. Ongoing excavations at Shég’ Xdaltth’í’ along McDonald Creek in the Tanana Flats, central Alaska, have yielded a unique assemblage of stone artifacts associated with a rich inventory of faunal elements, all dating ~13,900 calendar years ago. In this paper, we present the preliminary results of an analysis of artifacts recovered so far,...
Learning about a Place through Time: Kilusiktok Lake, North Slope, Alaska (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. This paper examines landscape learning through the lens of a particular landform near Kilusiktok Lake. The landform has been used by humans for at least 2,000 years, as evidenced by radiocarbon dates on a burnt bone layer, right up to the present, based on coffee cans, meat packages from the local store with expiration...
Learning by Doing: Past Foodways, Experimental Archaeology, and Collaborative Research (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our broad goal is to share on-going research with diverse communities and learn more together about past foodways and food-related technologies. To achieve this, we facilitated several research and training workshops alongside Tribal, Alaska Native, and agency partners from Oregon and Alaska. Our intention was to pair Indigenous and archaeological...
Least-Cost-Path Analysis as a Predictive Device for Conveyance and Mobility Patterns: The Case of Walker Road Obsidian (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The geochemical sourcing of artifacts manufactured on volcanic materials has often been used as a proxy for levels of landscape learning and mobility among Paleoindian peoples. Moreover, when traced to known sources, the distribution of volcanic materials has informed studies of specific conveyance patterns. The Walker Road site in the Nenana valley of central...
The Lithic Landscape of the Nenana Valley: Investigating Land-Use and Toolstone Procurement Activities in Interior Alaska (2018)
Investigating prehistoric landscape use is significant in answering questions about the adaptive strategies and behaviors of prehistoric Beringians. How can we define the lithic landscape? How did humans provision themselves in eastern Beringia, and how did these provisioning behaviors change through time? Toolstone procurement and selection behaviors influence toolkits, mobility, and settlement strategies; therefore, they are important in explaining prehistoric behavioral adaptation and the...
The Manufacture of Northern Fluted Points: A Production Sequence Hypothesis (2018)
Fluted projectile points have been found in the archaeological record of the North American Arctic for over 50 years. Only recently, however, have fluted points found in buried contexts associated with dateable materials and included in region-wide comparative analyses provided chronological, morphological, and technological evidence to support the cohesion of the Arctic specimens as their own fluted variant: the Northern Fluted Complex (NFC). Few sites have provided the opportunity to observe...
Mapping Thermal Features at Quartz Lake, Alaska (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Few archaeological sites from the late Holocene Dene/Athabascan tradition have been extensively studied, leaving researchers with many questions about everyday practices. Specifically, the function and spatial distribution of thermal features has yet to be extensively evaluated. Despite the ubiquity of cooking in daily life and cooking features in the...
Marine Foragers at the Top of the World: Zooarchaeological Analysis of a Thule Period Small Site at Uivvaq, Alaska (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Thule period is significant as a predecessor to modern Iñupiat culture, and yet understanding Thule life remains partial to the selectiveness of archaeological investigations. Much of the Alaskan Thule period research has focused on large settlements along the northwest coast (e.g. Point Hope, Walakpa, and Utqiaġvik). Smaller sites, such as the Uivvaq...
Maritime Archaic Spearpoints: A New Examination of Their Context and Chronology (2018)
This research focuses on the morphology, chronology, and provenience of nipple-based spear points found in Newfounland and Labrador. Nipple-based points are primarily thought to date between 7500-6000 B.P. and are associated with the early Maritime Archaic tradition, Newfoundland and Labrador’s earliest inhabitants. A recent find of a nipple-based point at the Stock Cove site (CKAl-3) in eastern Newfoundland suggests that, based on a series of new AMS dates, the chronology of this point type...
Metalheads about the Polar Sea: Metal-Use in the Eastern Arctic and Its Significance for Understanding Broader Interaction Dynamics (2023)
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...
Micromorphological Analysis of Deposition, Pedogenesis, and Stratigraphic Integrity at the McDonald Creek Site, Central Alaska (2021)
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. Despite the fact that archaeologists have long turned to the Alaskan archaeological record to answer questions about the first Americans, little is certain about the peopling of Beringia. The poor preservation of faunal remains in many central Alaskan archaeological sites has...
Modeling Climate, Ocean Productivity and Human Population Dynamics on the North Pacific Rim (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Global Perspectives on Climate-Human Population Dynamics During the Late Holocene" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We explore human population trends for several maritime regions around the North Pacific Rim over the last several thousand years. These data show correlated but oscillating patterns of populations from the eastern to the western Pacific. Two alternative models explain the patterns of population peaks and...
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 Archaeobotanical Data from the Late Pleistocene Occupations of McDonald Creek (2021)
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. What can archaeobotany tell us about past landscapes and human behavior at McDonald Creek during the Late Pleistocene? Since 2016, systematic charcoal and phytolith sampling has been performed at McDonald Creek with the following aims: (1) reconstruct the ligneous vegetation...
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...
Nuna Nalluituq / The Land Remembers: Spatial Technology and Community Engagement to Protect Alaska Native Heritage Landscapes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Adventures in Spatial Archaeometry: A Survey of Recent High-Resolution Survey and Measurement Applications" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Southwest Alaska’s Yukon-Kuskokwim (YK) Delta, where two immense salmon-bearing rivers flow into the Bering Sea, is the ancestral homeland of the Yup’ik people. This biodiverse subarctic tundra wetland is a landscape in constant flux from the annual cycle of flooding, silting, and...
Of Longhouses and Lineages: Evaluation of Transformations in Maritime Archaic Social Organization in the Far Northeast (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Kin, Clan, and House: Social Relatedness in the Archaeology of North American Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The social organization of Maritime Archaic groups of Newfoundland and Labrador is notoriously difficult to assess due to poor preservational environments, challenging logistics of working in the Subarctic, and a paucity of research directly applicable to such questions; however, a long chronological...
On the Edge of the Colonial Sphere: The Effects of Indirect Interaction on Subsistence Strategies in Northern Alaska (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Cabinets of Curiosities: Collections and Conservation in Archaeological Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. How did trade participation impact human-environmental interactions? It is known that the fur trade was a significant part of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century life in southern Alaska. However, the effects of the fur trade and the whaling industry on northern Alaskan lifeways have been understudied....