North America: Arctic and Subarctic (Geographic Keyword)
101-125 (225 Records)
Evidence from Arctic and North Atlantic archaeological sites shows marine mammals were frequently used by Norse settlers in Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands. Archaeofaunal assemblages often yield a wealth of complete bones, however, species-level identification is not possible for heavily fragmented specimens. Therefore, specific details about marine mammal utilization are often unquantified and marine species identification largely remains unverified. This paper reveals utility of ZooMS...
Geoarchaeology at the Little John Site (KdVo-6), Yukon Territory, Canada (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. The Little John Site (KdVo-6), Yukon Territory, Canada, contains the presence of both Chindadn/Nenana and Denali artifacts in unique stratified contexts. The site contains loess/paleosol stratigraphic sequences spanning the past 14,000 years. Sediment and soil, XRD, INAA/ICP-MS, and thin section analysis have illuminated the...
Geochemical Characterization and Raw Material Procurement at McDonald Creek, 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. Around 14,000 years ago, modern humans dispersed into eastern Beringia. McDonald Creek, located in the Tanana Valley, central Alaska, is a significant part of characterizing this dispersal as one of the earliest known sites in eastern Beringia. This site posesses three cultural...
Governing Powers: Conceptualizing Research Sovereignty in Archaeology (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. Throughout the past decade there have been significant dialogue and debate surrounding Indigenous Archaeology and the perceived challenges of designing and carrying out research. Indigenous approaches demand an individualized place-based approach, eluding the ability to establish a specific methodology. This can result in...
Hearth and Home at Sabbath Point: A Beothuk Housepit on Red Indian Lake, Newfoundland (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Hearth and Home in the Indigenous Northeast" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We report on recent excavations at an unusual Beothuk housepit feature located on Red Indian Lake, in the interior of the island of Newfoundland, Canada. The housepit is remarkable for its large size and hexagonal shape, for having escaped destruction from logging, flooding, and earlier avocational investigations, and for the fact that it does...
Hearth Features in High-Latitude Environments (2018)
The depositional context of many high-latitude archaeological sites often inhibits preservation of hearth features and associated organic remains. When preserved, subsurface hearth features provide insight into the role of plant resources in prehistoric hunter-gatherer economies. This research addresses questions of taphonomy, paleoecology, and prehistoric plant use with archaeobotanical analysis of hearth features from sites located in Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve and Gates of the...
Heritage Management in Nunatsiavut: Policy in Action (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Current Research and Challenges in Arctic and Subarctic Cultural Heritage Studies" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The heritage landscape in Nunatsiavut, and in the north more generally, is changing rapidly and in ways that demand changes in how we approach heritage management. Nunatsiavut holds 7,000 years of human history, and the importance of protecting and promoting this history is attested to in the Labrador...
The Hess Creek Site and Implications for Livengood and Yukon River Archaeology (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 Hess Creek Site (LIV-00001) is a multicomponent site 36 km southeast of the Yukon River within the Yukon-Tanana uplands. It was initially located in 1969, tested and partially excavated in 1970, and revisited in 1975, 2016, 2020, and 2021. Extensive excavation in 2021 shows a potential separation between two cultural zones, Cultural...
Holocene Occupations of the Blair Lakes Archaeological District (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. The Tanana Basin of interior Alaska is at the center of efforts to identify late Pleistocene and Holocene archaeological sites that better define regional occupation histories and provide insight into subarctic adaptation, technological organization, assemblage variability,...
Household Archaeology of Shaw Creek, Alaska (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study compares the remains of two prehistoric houses to those of the protohistoric past. Each housepit represents a different archaeological tradition, dating roughly to 1,000 and 2,000 years ago. If house features represent a stable material culture correlate reflecting a culture's core concept of the family unit, the comparison allows us a viewpoint of...
Human Behavioral Ecology and the Complexities of Arctic Foodways (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Human Behavioral Ecology at the Coastal Margins: Global Perspectives on Coastal & Maritime Adaptations" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper we will examine whether Arctic and Subarctic coasts have unique characteristics in the context of human behavioral ecology (HBE). We start with a review of the variability in maritime adaptations around the circumpolar north, and then examine efforts to apply HBE models...
Human Land Use Strategies and Responses to Risk during the Pleistocene–Holocene Transition in Eastern Beringia (2018)
Recent investigations in central Alaska at multiple scales (macro-regional, watershed, site cluster, intrasite) have revealed robust patterning among technological, faunal, and feature datasets. These responses are explored in the context of both regional environmental change associated with climatic oscillations between the Bolling-Allerod, Younger Dryas, and early Holocene chronozones as well as systemic change incorporating more logistical organization, shifts in diet breadth, and changes in...
Identification and Classification of the Environmental Microbiome of the 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. This pilot study aims to culture and monitor bacterial species from a specific range of archaeological samples from Temyiq Tuyuryaq, a multigenerational village in northern Bristol Bay, Alaska. Goals of this study are to test our ability to identify variability and consistency of the microbial species present in conditions of...
Identifying Consumption of Putrefied Meat in the Archaeological Record from δ15N Values (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Speth (2017) proposed that the consumption of putrid meat and fish might be a dietary item that is underexplored in the Upper Paleolithic food menu. In this presentation we explore ways to identify the consumption of putrid foods. We compare the results from our study of Δ15N observed in mammal muscle tissue decomposing during winter with published stable...
Implementing NAGPRA: A Look at BLM’s Experiences in Alaska, 1990–2017 (2018)
The 1990 passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) resulted in new responsibilities and challenges for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). These included working with museums and tribes concerning certain items in museums removed from federal land sometimes more than a century earlier. The BLM in Alaska has been actively involved with NAGPRA work since the early 1990s, and has completed numerous Federal Register Notices and repatriations with more in...
The Inglefield Land Archaeology Project in NW Greenland, 2004-16: Mitigating Cultural Resources in the Era of Climate Change (2019)
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. With support of the NSF Arctic Social Sciences program, we undertook seven field seasons (2004-2016) investigating the 4000-year history of human habitation of Inglefield Land, with particular attention to the Inughuit and their interactions with Euro-American Arctic explorers in the...
Innovation, Intensification, and "Maritimeness" 4,500 Years Ago at Chignik, Alaska (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. On the south side of the central Alaska Peninsula, close to culture-history's boundary between "Eskimo" and "Aleut," lies Chignik. Most archaeological investigations and explanations in the broader region have emphasized the overwhelming importance of resources derived from the sea. But at Chignik, evidence of a divergent facet of maritime adaptation has been...
Integrating GIS and QField for Enhanced Archaeological Surveys in the Maya Lowlands: A Methodological Approach for the El Tigre Project. (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 in the Maya lowlands is marked by its rich cultural heritage and challenging landscapes. Conducting surveys amidst dense vegetation presents unique difficulties, which have been exacerbated by remote sensing during fieldwork preparation. To improve our survey methodology, we integrated GIS and QField, an open-source mobile mapping...
Intentional Sustainability in Human Behavioral Ecology: Modeling Athabascan Caribou Predation (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The paradigm of Human Behavioral Ecology (HBE) utilizes behavioral ecological models to understand the adaptive relationship between human behavior and the environment in which people reside. The introduction of intentional sustainability to HBE models benefits this paradigm by diversifying the factors that influence human behavior and developing a greater...
Interconnections between Indigenous Women and Traditional Fire Practices in the Far North (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Women within hunter-gatherer societies have had deep interactions with fire through their cultural and gender roles for thousands of years. I aim to explore the intersections among Indigenous women of Dene speakers, fire, and material culture throughout the recent and more distant past. My focus is centered around women’s/girls’ interactions with their...
Interdisciplinary Studies at Delta River Overlook Site, a Late Pleistocene to Late Holocene Multicomponent Site in Central Alaska (2018)
Recent large-scale excavations at Delta River Overlook in the middle Tanana River basin yielded 12 components dating from the onset of the Younger Dryas (~12,860 cal BP) to the later Holocene (2300 cal yr BP). Well preserved faunal assemblages, including bison, are present in multiple components, with economic transitions evident at ~6000 cal yr BP. Several features and activity areas were analyzed, including ochre-rich processing areas. Over 20,000 lithic items have been analyzed, primarily...
Interpreting Technological Activities and Organization at McDonald Creek, Central Alaska, ca. 13,900 Calendar Years Ago (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. Continuing excavations at the McDonald Creek site, located in the Tanana Flats south of the city of Fairbanks, have yielded a significant assemblage of stone artifacts. Most of these come from a late Pleistocene cultural layer dating to about 13,900 calendar years ago, but...
Intrasite Spatial Analysis of the 13,800-year-old Component at Shég' Xdaltth’í’, Central Alaska (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Shég’ Xdaltth’í’ is an archaeological site (FAI-2043) located about 30 miles south of Fairbanks, Alaska in the Tanana Flats. Results of archaeological testing and excavations between 2013 and 2022 identified three distinct archaeological components, components 1, 2, and 3, dating to about 13,800 cal BP, 12,700 cal BP, and 5,000 cal BP, respectively. While...
Inuit Sled Dogs in the Contact Landscape: An Isotopic Investigation of Dog Provisioning in 16th–19th Century Labrador, Canada (2018)
The 16th through 19th centuries witnessed increasing cross-cultural interactions between the Inuit of the Labrador coast and European explorers, traders, and missionaries. The effects of colonialism in this period have been studied with respect to Inuit identity, material culture, gender, and social organization, but the nature of Inuit-animal relationships has received comparatively less attention. In addition to occupying a prominent social role, the sled dog facilitated Inuit mobility and...
Investigating Beringian Hunting Toolkits from Experiential Perspectives (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in Perishable Weaponry Studies: Developing Perspectives from Dated Contexts to Experimental Analyses" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Experimental archaeology is an underutilized methodology for investigating variability in projectile point technologies of Upper Paleolithic Siberia and Late Pleistocene/early Holocene eastern Beringia. This paper presents the results of a multifaceted experimental research...