North America: Arctic and Subarctic (Geographic Keyword)
126-150 (225 Records)
Stone bowls and griddle stones were in use in the Aleutian Islands for the past 9.000 years. People invested great time and effort into the manufacture and maintenance of these artefacts which insinuates their importance in prehistoric Aleutian food processing practices. A sudden increase in stone bowl occurrence around 3.500 years ago emphasizes their importance during this particular time. What was it that made these artefacts so important? We believe the answer to this question lies in their...
Investigations of the Late Pleistocene occupations at Holzman, Shaw Creek, Interior Alaska (2018)
The Holzman site, discovered in 2015, is roughly one half mile from the confluence of Shaw Creek with the Tanana River in interior Alaska. To date, we have excavated 56m2, revealing repeated occupations beginning in the Bolling-Allerod, and including an occupation in the Younger Dryas. Located near the Broken Mammoth, Mead, and Swan Point late Pleistocene sites, Holzman consists of a local stone flaking station, hearths, and thousands of faunal remains including organic implements on mammoth...
Isotopic Evidence of Long-Term Aquatic Resource Use at Tanada Creek, Alaska (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of the Southern Yukon-Alaska Borderlands" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Salmon are considered a critical subsistence resource in the Copper River basin, Alaska both currently and traditionally. Salmon migrations typically occur during a relatively short period in the summer, and provide a reliable, abundant influx of food. The duration of their presence in the basin and history of use are not well...
Landscape Learning and Climate Change: A Perspective from South-Central 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. The circumpolar north is one of the most rapidly warming places on the planet, resulting in changing vegetation, precipitation, and fire regimes along with altered animal migration cycles. Combined these trends are transforming once familiar places into environments to which people are unaccustomed, perhaps even new...
Laser Scanning and Preservation of House A3H5 at Kuukpak: A Study of Excavation and Archaeological Monitoring in an Arctic Environment (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological research at the Kuukpak site in the Mackenzie Delta represents a compelling case study in the face of climate change-induced coastal erosion. We offer an in-depth analysis of the innovative use of laser scanning technology in the excavation and preservation of the Kuukpak A3H5 semi-subterranean house. Our study focuses on the comparison of...
Late Pleistocene Stemmed Points in Arctic Alaska (2023)
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...
Molecular and Isotopic Analysis Indicates Variable Uses for Early Pottery from Northwest Alaska (2024)
This is an abstract from the "American Foragers: Human-Environmental Interactions across the Continents" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ceramic technology was adopted approximately 2,800 and 2,500 years ago in Alaska, coinciding with a transition toward an economy increasingly focused on marine resource use. Despite expectations for marine resource use in early northern pottery, an initial pilot study found strong evidence for freshwater aquatic...
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....
Nalaquq / “It is found”: Collaborative Heritage Landscape Survey and Spatial Technology with Alaska Native Communities (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Collaborative and Community Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the face of a rapidly changing climate, Alaska Native Yup'ik (pl. Yupiit) communities on the Bering Sea are increasingly empowered and motivated to protect their landscape heritage—facilitated in part by collaborative projects with outside institutions like the Quinhagak Archaeological Project (2009–present). In this paper we show how high...
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...