North America: Arctic and Subarctic (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Metin Eren. The Eren Lab Graduate Students.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1996, the anthropologist and ethnobotanist Wade Davis recounted in his book "Shadows in the Sun" the tale of an Inuit man who manufactured a knife out of his own feces and saliva as these raw materials froze during the arctic night. With these items he then butchered a dog. Since that time, this story has been told, and retold, on websites, radio...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Walls. Mari Kleist.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Max Friesen. Pamela Hakongak Gross.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean Desjardins. Scott Rufolo. Shyong En Pan. Jelke Take.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only François Lanoë. Joshua Reuther. Gerad Smith.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Whitridge.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only H. Kory Cooper. Matthew Pike. Garett Hunt.

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. Precontact Indigenous copper technological practices within the North American Northwest vary along regional, cultural, and temporal axes. After being screened for smelted metals and alloys using pXRF compositional data, we identified multiple significant patterns of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Damon Mullen. Karl Reinhard. Alvaro Montenegro. John Hawdon.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Humans brought many things with them when they came to the Americas. This study focuses on hookworms and domesticated dogs to revise, constrain, or enhance theoretical models of when and how humans first came to the Americas. The hookworm life cycle is critically dependent upon the environmental conditions and proximity to suitable hosts. Its eggs leave...

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 Nathan Shelley. Kelly Graf.

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. The McDonald Creek site (FAI-2043) is located about 30 miles south of Fairbanks, Alaska, in the Tanana Flats. Results of archaeological testing and excavations between 2013 and 2019 identified three distinct archaeological components, Components 1, 2, and 3 dating to about 13.8...

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 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 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 Nicholas Schmuck.

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. The debate over the Peopling of the Americas is one of grand narratives and contested archaeological evidence. The Landscape Learning Framework provides a mechanism for approaching the archaeological record at a difference scale, allowing us to rehumanize the study of population expansions in the terminal Pleistocene....

DOCUMENT Citation Only John White. Ted Goebel. Aureade Henry. Stephen Kuehn. Lindsay DiPietro.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. NAB-533 is a buried multi-component prehistoric site located in the northern Copper River Basin. National Park Service archaeologists engaged in compliance testing originally recorded the site in 2016. During the 2017 and 2018 field seasons NPS Archaeologist Lee Reininghaus led a project to conduct test excavations at NAB-533. These excavations revealed a...

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 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 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 Kelly Graf. Nathan Shelley. Julie Esdale. Ted Goebel.

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. Shég’ Xdaltth’í’ is located approximately 55 km southeast of Fairbanks, Alaska, approximately 55 km northwest of the Broken Mammoth / Mead/Holzman / Swan Point complex of sites, and about 18 km northwest of Upward Sun River. Continuing excavations have provided tens of thousands of material remains, consisting mostly of lithic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julie Esdale. Ian Buvit. Lindsay Doyle. Whitney McLaren.

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. In 1964, F. H. West investigated Donnelly Ridge, subsequently using material from there and a few other interior Alaskan sites to define what he termed the Denali complex. In later years, numerous archaeologists returned to Donnelly Ridge for monitoring and limited testing, but nothing substantial was done to synthesize all the data or...

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 Julie Esdale. Kelly Graf.

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 is a multicomponent campsite located in the central Tanana Valley south of Fairbanks, Alaska. In addition to late Pleistocene components, archaeological excavations at the site have uncovered a productive Northern Archaic occupation dating to the middle Holocene....

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 Kelly Graf. Julie Esdale. Ted Goebel. Nathan Shelley. Thomas Urban.

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, located in the Tanana Flats ~55 km south of Fairbanks, Alaska, rests on an isolated remnant of an ancient alluvial terrace of the Tanana River that hugs the southeast corner of a monadnock rising from the flats. While testing the site, we discovered a...