North America: Arctic and Subarctic (Geographic Keyword)
51-75 (168 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Caribou drive systems are often noted peripherally to important archaeology sites in the Alaska Arctic and are generally assumed to result from late Precontact and early Postcontact hunting strategies. However, little research has been conducted that attempts to date these hunting features. This poster outlines preliminary dating results from a recent...
Dennis Stanford: The Alaska Years and Beyond (2018)
Dennis Stanford was first introduced to Alaskan archaeology in 1966 as a field assistant to Robert L Humphrey during an archaeological survey in the Utukok River valley in the western Brooks Range. At the urging of John M. ("Jack") Campbell he began work near Point Barrow in 1968 to investigate controversial questions about the origins of Thule culture. Following brief investigations at the Utkiavik site, he focused his excavations south of Barrow at Walakpa, where he discovered more than 20...
Diachronic Patterns in Subsistence at Swan Point, Tanana Valley, Alaska (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Approximately 1000 years ago, the archaeological record of Southcentral and interior Alaska shows a shift toward the increased use of fish caches, semi-subterranean houses, permanent year-round villages, and the appearance of ranked societies. Ultimately, the highly mobile big game hunter-gatherer way of life was supplanted by more intensive resource...
Diverging Harvesting Strategies of Atlantic Walruses: An Intercontinental Comparison (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, we compare historic Atlantic walrus commercial and subsistence exploitation in Svalbard (Norway) and Foxe Basin (Arctic Canada), respectively. Data are drawn from osteometric analysis of zooarchaeological surface remains at harvest locales (examined both in situ and in museum collections). In studying harvest strategies of the same species...
E-Week: Youth Collaboration within an Indigenous Framework (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. Community driven approaches to archaeological research have provided the discipline with new and creative opportunities for engagement and dialogue. This poster explores the benefits of community engagement in the context of the k-12 classroom as part of a the NSF funded research,Temyiq Tuyuryaq; a collaborative archaeology the...
Early Thule Inuit Architecture in the Arctic: An Anchor in Migration and Movement (2019)
This is an abstract from the "More Than Shelter from the Storm: Hunter-Gatherer Houses and the Built Environment" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During and for a few hundred years after the Thule Inuit migration around AD 1200, early Thule groups in the North American Arctic established village sites in new locations where they maintained a similarity in ceremonial architecture, house form, and division of space, despite the variability of...
Effects of Past and Present Climate Change: Viking Age and Norse Sites in 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. This presentation is one of the products of a series of ongoing interconnected, international, interdisciplinary fieldwork projects coordinated by the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization (NABO) research cooperative since 2005 in Greenland. The projects drew on more than a century of prior field research, where four...
Ellmig Qukaq. She is the Center: Indigenous Archaeology of Temyiq Tuyuryaq (2018)
Ashmore and others have taken the time to observe and discuss the inherently gendered ‘nature’ of the landscape. As an indigenous scholar this discussion directs me toward concepts of "nature" and specifically, our mother earth, our peoples, and our celestial beings. Mother earth is impregnated with our past, cradling our lives and our ancestors in her womb, from which they once came, and returning (for matters within our discipline) to us in "archaeological context", if you will. I argue that...
Environmental Change and Human Ecology in Central Alaska during the Early Holocene: Hollembaek’s Hill (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dramatic environmental changes occurred in central Alaska during the Early Holocene as mixed woodlands and grasslands transitioned to boreal forest ecosystems. Despite 80 years of research in this region, we are just beginning to understand how interior Alaskan populations coped with the extinction of the large grazers (bison and elk) that constituted their...
The Environmental Context of the Dorset-Thule Transition: Evidence from Stable Isotope Analysis of Archaeofauna (2018)
Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses of fauna from archaeological sites in the Central Canadian Arctic Archipelago were performed to examine the environmental context of the Dorset-Thule transition. Isotopic data from a large number of ringed seals demonstrate that there was a reduction in the importance of primary production derived from sea ice-associated algae during the Thule occupation relative to the earlier Dorset occupation; these data are consistent with an increase in open water...
Ersersaaneq Project: Creating Knowledge Through Images (2018)
In 2016, the Ersersaaneq project was instigated by three students from the University of Greenland to create an online repository of 3D models of the Gustav Holm collection. In Greenlandic the word ersersaaneq captures the idea of producing knowledge through the creation of visual images. The goal is to digitally re-unify parts of the collection and develop coherency within a global context. Project partners include Greenland National Museum, The Smithsonian Institution and The National Museum...
Ethnoarchaeological Exploration of the Western Brooks Range, 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 western Alaska Brooks Range contains a diverse arctic ecosystem, scenic landscapes, and deep cultural roots. The foothills of the western Brooks Range crosses BLM, NPS, State, and Tribal lands, and it spans Iñupiaq and Koyukon Athabsacan homelands. Archaeological research from the region is minimal and remains relatively unexplored....
Evaluating Late Holocene Stone Tool Production at Delta Creek, Alaska (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This project aims to better understand the lifestyles of nomadic hunter-gatherers in Alaska by analyzing early Holocene lithic material from the multicomponent Delta Creek site (XBD-110). This was achieved by conducting a functional lithic analysis of the tools and lithic debitage found within the rich early Holocene component, dated to 9,435±100 calibrated...
Evaluation of Pleistocene Mammoth Ivory Use and Radiocarbon Laboratory Results from the Holzman Site in Interior 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 recently discovered Holzman site lies along the west bank of Shaw Creek, a northern tributary of the Tanana River, Interior Alaska. Excavations beginning in 2015 revealed an expedient stone technology alongside well-preserved hearths, avifauna and large mammal remains including a mammoth tusk in deeply buried deposits. Evidence of food preparation and...
Excavations at Inspector Island, Newfoundland, Canada (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Inspector Island is a large, multi-component site located in Notre Dame Bay, on the island of Newfoundland, Canada. The site was first discovered and excavated by Ralph Pastore of Memorial University in the 1980s, and then revisited and re-excavated this past summer by the two lead authors. Excavations indicate a large Maritime Archaic habitation site...
An Experimental Study of Arctic Ceramic Cooking Vessel Performance (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ceramic vessels from the Norton (2800–1500 BP) and Thule (1350–250 BP) traditions often differ in wall thickness and the proportion and type of temper, suggesting they may have performed differently for cooking. This experimental study explores how technological choices (wall thickness, temper, and surface treatments) affected physical characteristics...
Exploring the Antiquity of the Dene Potlatch in Interior Alaska (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Pickupsticks site in the Shaw Creek Flats of the Middle Tanana Valley region of interior Alaska represents a short-term ceremonial occupation site of the early Dene tradition (~930 rcybp). In 2010, the remains of a large structural feature were identified there. Intermittent excavations over the following decade confirmed the structural remains were...
Exploring the Cause of the Athabaskan Migration through Isotopic and Geospatial Evidence (2018)
Linguistic and archaeological evidence suggests that Athabaskan-speaking peoples rapidly spread south from present-day Central Alaska and Northwest Canada into the Great Plains region around 1000 years ago. Historically, explanations of this important event have centered on relatively small geographic regions and traditional methodologies. This paper offers an alternative view at both a much larger scale and using distinct methods. I argue that this significant migration event was driven by the...
Exploring the Function and Adaptive Context of Paleo-Arctic Projectile Points (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the results of a large-scale experimental archaeology project investigating variability in the projectile point technologies of Upper Paleolithic Siberia and late Pleistocene/early Holocene eastern Beringia. A series of 36 projectile points (12 lanceolate bifaces; 12 composite slotted caribou antler points inset with chert microblades; 12...
Exploring Toolstone Provisioning on the Nenana Valley Lithic Landscape (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Beringian record is critical to understanding human dispersals and adaptive behaviors of the earliest peoples in the Americas. Late Pleistocene and Holocene peoples subsisted on a dynamic and changing landscape that undoubtedly influenced technological organization, including toolstone procurement and selection patterns. The interior Alaskan record is...
Farms of Hunters: Medieval Norse Settlement, Land- and Sea-Use in Low Arctic Greenland (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Norse that settled in Greenland between c. AD 985-1450 depended greatly on the harvesting of local to regional Arctic marine resources for both subsistence and oversees trade. However, the mechanics and organization around this important marine economy have only left a limited imprint in the archaeological record, which is dominated by evidence of...
Fire Archaeology: Preservation in Practice (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me: What Have We Learned Over the Past 40 Years and How Do We Address Future Challenges" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster focuses on the development and future of Cultural Resource Protection and Management before, during, and after wildfires. As the number of fires and acres burned continue to increase each year cultural resources are at critical risk of being damaged and destroyed....
Following in the Footsteps of the National Geographic Society's Original Katmai Expeditions (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster, combined with a virtual reality headset, will present the methods and results of the multi-disciplinary research project "Following in the footsteps of the National Geographic Society’s original Katmai expeditions" carried out in partnership with the National Geographic Society (NGS), Explore.org and Katmai National park. The project sought to...
Food, Fuel, or Fluke? The Interpretive Potential of Microbotanical Remains Recovered from Burnt Residues on Koniag Pottery from the Malriik Site (KOD-405), Kodiak Island, Alaska (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. On Kodiak Island, Alaska many aspects of life changed during the Koniag Phase (650–200 BP): houses became larger and side-rooms were built to store food, social status and labret wearing intensified, community buildings known as qasgit ("men's houses") were built, and people began to use pottery. Zooarchaeological evidence demonstrates that marine mammals,...
Freshwater and Anadromous Fishing in Ice Age Beringia (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. While freshwater and anadromous fishing are critical economic resources for late prehistoric and modern Indigenous peoples in western North America, the origin and development of fishing is not well understood. Here we present results from investigations into all reported fish assemblages in central Alaska earlier than 7000 cal yr BP....