North America: Arctic and Subarctic (Geographic Keyword)
76-100 (225 Records)
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...
Expedient Tools from a Functional Angle (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Expedient Technological Behavior: Global Perspectives and Future Directions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In almost every culture of the world, expedient tools are present. They are “tools of the moment.” These flakes were crafted quickly with semi-improvised techniques, then used for a short period of time and discarded. The use of flakes as tools may not only indicate reuse or recycling of debitage waste, but also...
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...
A Faunal Analysis of the Outlet Site (XHP315), Etivlik Lake, Northern Alaska (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Located on the shore of Etivlik Lake in the Brooks Range in Northern Alaska, the Outlet Site (XHP315) consists of numerous late Holocene pit houses. One of these house features (#74) was excavated in 2006 during a University of Alaska Fairbanks archaeological field school. Faunal analysis was undertaken by a zooarchaeology class during fall semester 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....
Fixed if by Ice, Loose if by Sea? Harpoon Technology as Evidence of Hunting-Scapes in the Neoglacial Eastern Aleutian Islands (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The effect of cooling climate during the Neoglacial period (3000-5000 BP) on societies in the Eastern Aleutian Islands is contested. Some archaeologists have argued that the appearance of toggling harpoon heads by 3000 BP indicate an adaptation to hunting marine mammals in an icy environment. This conclusion is problematic because toggling harpoons were...
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,...
The Formation and Distribution of a Chindadn Component Tool Assemblage: Insights from Microwear Analysis (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. This paper presents the results of an extensive use-wear analysis of the lithic assemblage recovered from the Chindadn component at the Little John site (KdVo-6). Within the context of Little John, this component dates from the Late Bølling Allerød Interstadial to the Younger Dryas (14,300-11,900 RCYBP). The study population...
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....
Friends in High Places. An Integrated Examination of the Long-Term Relationship between Humans and Dogs in Arctic Prehistory (2018)
Dogs are arguably the most significant domestic species in the circumpolar North, in both their universal importance to life-ways and their near-uniqueness as a regional domesticate. The Arctic was the gateway for at least 4 independent waves of migration of dogs into the Americas, beginning as early as ~17,500-13,000 years ago, making this region particularly important for investigating not only the cultural and technological functions of Arctic dogs, but also the impact of successive...
From Omajuk to NiKik: The Variable Transformation of Animals into Social Things among the Historic Period 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. Archaeological studies have conventionally regarded Inuit relationships to animals in terms of subsistence and food-getting, from seasonality and hunting strategies to calories of meat, fat, and marrow consumed. Inuit oral traditions and ethnographic sources, however, offer...
From Source to Site: Investigating Diachronic Toolstone Procurement and Land-Use in the Nenana Valley, 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 archaeological record of Eastern Beringia is critical to understanding human dispersal into the Americas and the settling-in processes of the First Americans and their descendants. Investigating prehistoric landscape use and provisioning behaviors is significant in answering questions related to adaptive behaviors of prehistoric Beringians. We can begin...
Gardens in the Aleutian Islands: Landscape Management by Unangan/Unangas Ancestors (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Prehistoric large village midden sites in the Aleutian Islands provide soil chemistry and drainage environments optimal for the growth of plants that feature prominently in Unangan/Unangas traditional subsistence. Previous interpretations view this as fortuitous and non-deliberate. We argue that evidence suggests instead that plants useful in subsistence and...