North America: Arctic and Subarctic (Geographic Keyword)
26-50 (225 Records)
Much of the early theoretical framework for our understanding of the colonization and occupation of interior Alaska has been established on technological variability in lithic assemblages of the region. This initial research has been limited in scope, focusing on the presence or absence of microblades. Recent research has sought to push beyond the significance of debatably diagnostic tool forms, microblades, in defining cultural complexes and has attempted to more fully address models of...
Assessment of the Archaeological Record for the Tanana Valley, Alaska, and a New Cultural Synthesis (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 archaeological record in the Tanana Valley region has accrued for almost a century and investigators have applied a variety of different naming schemes for these complex archaeological records. There is a need to synthesize nomenclature for these cultural phenomena. In general, archaeologists have fitted identified components into...
Avvajja (Abverdjar) Revisited: Reconstructing Tuniit (Dorset Paleo-Inuit) and Recent-Historic Inuit Life at an Iconic Site in Northern Foxe Basin, Nunavut, Canada (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Arctic Pasts: Dimensions of Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations in the early to mid-twentieth century at the multicomponent site Avvajja (Abverdjar) (NiHg-1), northern Foxe Basin, Nunavut, produced arguably some of the most iconic Tuniit (Late Dorset Paleo-Inuit) artifacts yet found in Inuit Nunangat (the traditional Inuit territories of Arctic Canada). Avvajja is also notable for being the site of the...
Beach Level Chronology and Paleodemography at Alarniq, Northern Foxe Basin, Arctic Canada (2018)
In this paper we discuss beach level chronology and settlement at Alarniq—the ‘type-site’ for Dorset culture history and one of the largest Dorset archaeological sites in the Eastern Arctic. The Dorset occupation at the site extends approximately 3 km along a succession of raised gravel beach ridges, ranging in elevation between 8 to 24 m asl, and is almost entirely comprised of semi-subterranean structures that would have been occupied during the cold season. The number of houses varies across...
Belongings as Archives: An Abundant Approach to Sugpiaq Archaeology (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The historian Tiya Miles argues for an abundant approach to history, in which researchers learn to excavate absences in the historical record instead of allowing those silences to stand. Belongings (a.k.a. artifacts or objects) are additional archives that contain the stories, energies, and contexts in which they were made and used. As part of my work with...
Beringian Landscapes and Human Responses in the Middle Tanana Valley, Alaska (2018)
The middle Tanana Valley of interior Alaska, an unglaciated region of Eastern Beringia, holds a high-resolution record of human-environment interaction that extends over 14,000 years. The Late Glacial and early Holocene landscapes of this region were dynamic with considerable ecological restructuring. Aeolian deposits accumulated in lowland areas and adjacent foothills at relatively high rates, soils were relatively underdeveloped, river down-cutting prevailed across the valley, and wild fires...
Beyond Binaries: Queering the Archaeological Record of the Western Canadian Arctic (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Queer theory is often equated with sexuality research in archaeology (Blackmore 2011), but a queering of the archaeological record actually allows us to challenge all aspects of (hetero)normativity in archaeological practice (Croucher 2005; Blackmore 2011). Queer is "whatever is at odds with the normal, legitimate and the dominant" (Halperin 1995:62), and it...
Birnirk and Thule Pottery: Analysis of Arctic Ceramics from Inuigniq (Cape Espenberg), Alaska (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We are conducting a multi-year (2009-2018), multi-disciplinary research project at Inuigniq (Cape Espenberg) to explore changing patterns of human occupation, culture change, and environmental conditions in Northwest Alaska. Our current focus is on the emergence of Birnirk archaeological culture ca. AD 1000, and the question of how Birnirk culture factored...
The Birnirk to Thule Transition as Viewed from Two Adjacent Houses at Cape Espenberg (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Arctic Pasts: Dimensions of Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The transformation of the Birnirk culture into the Thule culture remains central to the development of modern Inuit peoples across the Arctic. Nevertheless, its chronological definition remains imprecise and contentious despite a century of research since the discovery of the Birnirk site near Utqiagvik and the definition of the Thule culture in the...
The Birnirk/Thule Migrations: Pushed from an Overpopulated Bering Strait Dominated by Old Bering Sea Culture (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Arctic Pasts: Dimensions of Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A climate-driven eastward push of Thule migrants remains axiomatic to many arctic archaeologists, associated with presumed warming weather of the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA), by tradition dated ca. AD 1000. Thule researchers implicated a rapid migration by rapacious “over-killing” seal-hunters and whalers entering unoccupied landscapes—increasingly...
Bluefish Caves I, II, III: Taphonomic Analysis of the Mammal and Bird Bone Assemblages (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Following its discovery and excavation in the 1970-1980’s, the Bluefish Caves site (northern Yukon Territory, Canada) yielded a small number of stone artifacts and thousands of vertebrate remains buried in late Pleistocene loess. Preliminary taphonomic observations suggested that modern humans visited the caves about 30,000 years ago, raising considerable...
Bluefish Caves Revisited: Testing a Potential Pre-Clovis Site in Eastern 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. Originally excavated by Jacques Cinq-Mars in the 1970s and 1980s, Bluefish Caves, Yukon Territory, yielded artifacts and faunal remains. Cinq-Mars’s chronology for human occupation at the site dates to as early as ca. 24 ka and has been corroborated by AMS 14C-dated cut-marked bones. These findings support the genetic “Beringian...
Bone Artifacts from Summer Bay, Unalaska (2018)
Situated in Alaska’s eastern Aleutian Islands on Unalaska Island, the Summer Bay site dates to 2,000 years BP. Over 700 osseous objects representing various manufacture and use stages have been recovered. Among these are harpoons, fish hooks, labrets, points, wedges, awls, and needles. These are primarily made from sea mammals and avifauna. Although Summer Bay represents one of the most secure dates of the Amaknak Phase (3,000 to 1,000 years BP), minimal research has been done to better...
Building a Database to Understand the Architecture of Arctic Wooden House Remains (2018)
Western Arctic archaeological sites hold the remains of wooden houses occupied during the second millennium AD by ancestors of the present Inuit people. Although the permafrost helps to maintain these features in excellent condition, the giant puzzle resulting from the collapse of the frame makes it hard to understand their original architecture. During the ArcticCHAR project, we excavated a house at Kuukpak (Northwest Territories, Canada) in 2014 and 2016. Facing the complexity of this feature,...
The Carpenter Quarry Site: A Unique Salvage Excavation Strategy (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 Carpenter Quarry site is an early multicomponent site discovered in the interior of Alaska in 2021. The site overlooks the Tanana River and Shaw Creek Flats, an area rich in significant sites, including Broken Mammoth, Mead, Holzman, and Swan Point. The site, located on top of a bluff with the Middle Tanana Dene place name...
Centering Alluitsoq: The Potential for an Indigenous Archaeology in Greenland (2018)
Postcolonial and Indigenous archaeologies have changed the theoretical, methodological, and political landscapes of our discipline’s engagement with regions and peoples once conceptualized as peripheral to the European core. However, some regions, and the subjects that move within them, still occupy the conceptual margins. This paper considers the position of archaeological praxes in Greenland, a constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark, and the late arrival of the postcolonial critique to...
Clarifying Perceptions of Rock: Prehistoric Use of Common Toolstone in Tangle Lakes, Alaska (2018)
Archaeologists have had difficulty agreeing upon uniform designations of certain kinds of toolstone that are not easily distinguishable visually. There are occasions when the archaeological definition of toolstone material and the geological definition of the same toolstone material do not match. A situation where this discrepancy might arise is when archaeologists give a more specific name to a cryptocrystalline silicate that is difficult to identify based on visual analysis. An understanding...
Cleaning up History: Historic preservation at Formally Used Defense Sites (2019)
This is an abstract from the "U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: A National Perspective on CRM, Research, and Consultation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Alaska District's Formally Used Defense Site (FUDS) program conducts environmental remediation of abandoned World War II and Cold War era military facilities owned by federal, state, and local parties. These FUDS properties, which are often in remote...
Clearing the Fog: Contributions to Central Aleutian Island Archaeology (2019)
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. Archaeological survey and excavation on Adak Island, Aleutian archipelago, Alaska were funded by NSF through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The chance NSF and Anna Kerttula took on a small project in a remote location with a small crew had an unexpected and significant effect on the understanding of...
Climate Change and the Rapid Loss of Organic Deposits in West Greenland (2018)
The REMAINS (REsearch and Management of Archaeological sites IN a changing environment and Society) of Greenland project has explored a number of factors that currently threaten Greenland’s archaeological landscape in the coming decades. This paper reviews recent work as well as the problems and threats to coastal and inland middens along the country’s West coast and adjacent inner fjord systems. Information gathered in recent years provides a baseline for "ground-truthing" predictive models of...
Colonial Households and Homes: Changes in Kalaallit Architecture, 1750–1900 (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From the initial colonization of Kalaallit Nunaat, houses and housing have been a contested subject. The Danish Trade wanted Kalaallit Inuit to live traditionally as before missionization, spread out and following the animals, thus increasing the economic return. However, the Mission wanted Kalaallit Inuit close to the colonies because it would ease...
Community Archaeology and the Nuniaq Culture Camp: Undergraduate Perspectives on Practicing Community-Based Archaeology in Old Harbor, Alaska (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In July 2023, the Old Harbor Archaeological History Project partnered with the Alutiiq Tribe of Old Harbor and the Old Harbor Alliance to co-facilitate Nuniaq Culture Camp on Sitkalidak Island, Alaska. Thirty-five Alaska Native children and teens from Old Harbor attended a five-day culture camp, in which they participated in archaeological excavation,...
Community, Co-design, and Climate: Case Studies in Designing Public Outreach for Arctic Archaeology (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. Archaeological visualization—the task of picturing the past in the present—exists at the intersections of data collection, interpretation, local perspectives, and artfully crafted storytelling. This type of science communication and public engagement work forms a core dimension of archaeology today, particularly for projects...
Comparing Archaeology and Oral Tradition at the Tlákw.aan (Old Town) Site, Yakutat Bay, Alaska (2018)
Southeast Alaskan oral narratives describe the epic migration of an Ahtna Raven clan from its interior Copper River territory over montane glaciers to the Pacific coast at Yakutat Bay, where the group founded the village of Tlákw.aan (Old Town) and intermarried with Eyak and Tlingit lineages. The multi-cultural origins of the residents are reflected in architecture and artifacts excavated at the site by Frederica de Laguna in the 1950s and during collaborative Smithsonian investigations in 2014....
Comparing Lithic Procurement and Use Within the Foxe Basin, Nunavut (2018)
This paper presents a systematic review and update on the nature of stone tool use in the Foxe Basin region throughout the Paleo-Inuit period (2,500 BCE-1,600CE). The Foxe Basin was previously thought to have been a core area of ecological stability/predictability that supported an uninterrupted occupation throughout the Paleo-Inuit timespan. Given the untenability of the core area model and that populations fluctuated over time and space, a reevaluation of lithic technologies and their change...