arctic (Other Keyword)
76-100 (212 Records)
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 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...
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...
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...
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,...
Foxes and Humans at the Late Holocene Uyak Site, Kodiak, Alaska (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Do Good Things Come in Small Packages? Human Behavioral Ecology and Small Game Exploitation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The red fox (Vulpes vulpes) is a generalist, omnivorous predator that is often drawn to human environments, exploiting anthropogenic refuse. Foxes may bear little or significant economic importance to prehistoric human foragers, depending on the environmental, economic, and cultural context. Here...
Foxy Ladies: investigating human-animal interactions at Agvik, Banks Island (2017)
Outstanding organic preservation at many Arctic sites gives archaeologists access to large artifactual and faunal assemblages through which to examine human-animal interactions. However, much of the research focused on these interactions conceives them not only in ecological/economic terms, but also examines them at the level of entire communities (e.g. zooarchaeological studies of subsistence) or focuses on the predominantly male realm of hunting. The Arctic ethnographic record reflects a...
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 Medieval Wool Tunics to Bone Powder: Rapid Degradation of Norse Middens in Southwest Greenland (2018)
This presentation is one of the products of a series of ongoing inter-connected, international, interdisciplinary fieldwork projects coordinated by the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization (NABO) research cooperative since 2005 in Greenland. The projects drew upon more than a century of prior field research, where four generations of archaeologists described and assessed organic preservation conditions at their sites in several regions of the Norse Eastern Settlement. This created a unique...
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...
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...
Genetic and ZooMS Identification of Marine Mammal Bone from Norse Sites in Iceland and Greenland: Insights into Historic Ecology and Norse Economies (2018)
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...
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...
Geophysical Investigations of Archaeological Sites in Alaska’s National Parks and Preserves: 2016 Field Season (2017)
Alaska’s National Parks and Preserves have seen increased use of geophysical methods for cultural resource management and archeological research in the past several years. Here we describe the results of geophysical surveys conducted at several of Alaska’s National Parks and Preserves in the summer of 2016 as part of an ongoing effort that has span several field seasons and has now included eight parks and preserves. Examples from 2016 include research at Gates of the Arctic National Park and...
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...
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...
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...
Iita before the fall: Mitigation of a unique stratified site in the high Arctic of Greenland (2017)
Iita (Etah), which sits on the north shore of Foulke Fjord in northwestern Greenland, in many ways could serve as a poster child for climate-change-driven destruction of coastal sites. Sitting on an alluvial fan at the base of a steep-sloped kame deposit, the site has rich historic and late prehistoric occupations visible on its surface. But more uniquely for the high Arctic, there are also 1000 years of continuous human use locked in stratigraphically sequenced buried soils, starting with the...
The Inequalities of Households – Cemetery Management and Social Change in Early Medieval Iceland (2018)
In AD 1000 Icelanders adopted Christianity in an apparently swift and embracive fashion. The new tradition was implemented by discrete households that built private churches and cemeteries on their farms. These cemeteries were in use until the beginning of the 12th century and interred were all individuals of the household, men and women, the old and the young, householders and servants. The establishment, management, and abandonment sequences of these cemeteries reflect the religious, social,...
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...