Alaska (Other Keyword)
26-42 (42 Records)
This dataset is comprised of lithic analysis data from terminal Pleistocene through late Holocene prehistoric lithic assemblages recovered at nineteen archaeological sites in the upper Susitna River basin, southern Alaska Range
Prehistoric landscape use in the central Alaska Range: lithic analysis dataset from the upper Susitna River basin (2016)
This dataset is comprised of lithic assemblage data from terminal Pleistocene through late Holocene prehistoric lithic assemblages recovered at nineteen archaeological sites in the upper Susitna River basin, southern Alaska Range
Prehistory and Climate Change in Southwest Alaska (2015)
Significant elements of the artifact assemblage, architectural features as well as recent DNA analysis of human hair recovered from the Nunalleq site (GDN-248), all support the idea of Thule cultural expansion onto the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region of Alaska. Other evidence points to strong links with the Alutiiq (a dialect of Yup’ik) speaking peoples on the Kodiak Archipelago, Alaska Peninsula and Prince William Sound. There are clear similarities between late prehistoric Yup’ik and Alutiiq...
A Provisional Cultural Resource Survey off Northern Alaska (2013)
The United States' Bureau of Ocean Energy Managemnt (BOEM) will require comprehensive and integrated scientific information from the northern Alaska region's Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) to improve regulatory decisions and environmental analyses that will be pertinent for allowing lease sales in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas to energy industry representatives. BOEM is also manadated to mitigate the effects of its actions on submerged cultural resource materials. By joining the National Ocean...
Regional-To-Global Trade Networks Reflected In Isolated Alaskan Gold Camps (2020)
This is a poster submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Archaeological excavations at a host of early-mid 20th century Alaskan mining camps over the past 25 years have provided a wealth of data on the influx of goods from local, regional, national, and international sources. This poster reviews changes in trade network patterns over time, as reflected in the archaeological record, relative to processes occurring at various scales of analysis...
Results of Section 106 Fieldwork at Three Archaeological Sites in Alaska: Producing Meaningful Research Results Under the Shadow of the Sequester (2015)
This paper presents results of recent Section 106 fieldwork undertaken by archaeologists with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Alaska Region, in 2013 and 2014. Results from work on sites along the Unalakleet River, the Agulokwak River, and Little Lake Louise in central, southwestern and southeastern Alaska, respectively, are presented. The problem of producing research that represents a contribution to the field of archaeology, within the constraints of agency mandates, the Section 106 process,...
Revisiting Castle Hill (1804-1867): A Russian-American Company Fort in Tlingit Territory (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Colonial Forts in Comparative, Global, and Contemporary Perspective", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The incursion of colonial Russian fur hunters into the Pacific spanned more than a century, resulting in 20 principal Alaskan settlements. Russian entrepreneurs, deep-rooted in a feudal system adapted to the conquest of Siberia during the 16th-17th centuries, applied this cultural framework to 18th century...
Russian Colonial-Influenced Architecture in an Alaska Creole Village, Afognak, Alaska (2015)
In 2012, at the request of the Native Village of Afognak, a multi-agency team documented Afognak Village, an Alutiiq Creole settlement abandoned following the 1964 Alaska earthquake and tsunami. Village features included pre-contact and historical period archaeological sites, cemeteries, garden plots, fencelines, trails, remnants of a Russian Orthodox church, and numerous residences and outbuildings. Nearly all the buildings had at least partially collapsed and many were in advanced states of...
Russian Occupation of St. Matthew and Hall Islands, Bering Sea Wildlife Refuge, Alaska (2015)
St. Matthew and Hall islands are located in the Bering Sea, far from the Alaskan mainland. First discovered by the Russians between 1764 and 1766, little attempt was made to occupy or utilize these islands until 1809 when a fur hunting expedition was sent to St. Matthew to over-winter. In 2012, the USF&WS sent an archaeologist to attempt to locate the site of this earlier Russian hunting camp with archaeological investigations focused on the testing of an earlier identified cabin site on St....
Saddle Plates, Sheaves And Sulfur: The Archaeological Visibility Of Chilkoot Pass Aerial Trams (2015)
Chilkoot Trail tramways played a significant role assisting stampeders crossing the perilous Chilkoot Pass during the peak years of the Klondike Gold Rush, 1897-1899. Competing freight companies constructed three different aerial tram systems to haul equipment and goods over the steep and narrow pass. Today, no tram structures remain standing – all physical evidence of the tram systems survive only as archaeological features scattered among the high outcrops and boulder strewn...
Stable isotope analysis of permafrost-preserved human hair and faunal remains from Nunalleq, Alaska: dietary variation, climate change and the pre-contact Arctic food-web (2015)
The reconstruction of diet and subsistence strategies is integral to understanding past societies and human-environment interactions. Here we present stable carbon, nitrogen and sulphur isotope data from non-mortuary human hair and faunal remains from the site of Nunalleq, Alaska. Spanning the Little Ice Age (c.1350 to 1650 AD), this large, complex and well-preserved site offers a near-unique opportunity to reconstruct the pre-contact Arctic food-web and to explore temporal and site-spatial...
Subsistence and Seasonality during the Thule Phase (ca. 1000 B.P. to contact era) at Point Spencer, Alaska (2017)
Intensification of marine resource use is well documented over the last 1000 years in northern Alaska, but the role of other resources in the subsistence economy is poorly understood. In order to better understand the full range of subsistence activities, and to reconstruct season of site occupation, we undertook analysis of faunal materials from several Thule Phase sites located on Point Spencer, Alaska. The subsistence remains from a large site near the tip of the peninsula (TEL-8) were found...
Subsistence and Settlement at Cape Krusenstern, Alaska (2015)
A group of recently discovered features from Cape Krusenstern, Alaska have yielded radiocarbon ages within both the Western Thule and Kotzebue culture periods. Results of preliminary faunal analyses indicate the presence of fish bone in proportions higher than have been previously reported for other Cape Krusenstern settlements. This paper reviews and assesses the zooarchaeological data from these features and provides comparisons to known archaeological subsistence practices of the region....
Sweet aDNA O'Mine: The Rise and Fall of Ice Sheets and the Arctic Peopling from Beringia (2016)
The peopling of the North American Arctic was made possible after the full retreat of the Laurentide ice sheet. The archaeological record supports multiple migrations beginning approximately 6,000 years BP, thousands of years after the initial colonization of the Americas. Modern Iñupiat/Inuit peoples are the descendants of a recent (~800 ybp) and rapid (<200 years) migration by the Neo-Eskimo Thule. The Thule brought with them specialized technological developments adapted for the exploitation...
Taking the temperature of the Arctic past: Extracting temperature and precipitation information from bacterial lipids deposited in faunal remains from Cape Krusenstern, Alaska (2016)
Throughout his career, J. Louis Giddings explored the roles of climate on maritime and terrestrial resources and human ingenuity in adapting technologies and social strategies to exploit those resources under changing conditions. At Cape Krusenstern, Alaska, Giddings’ teams identified sequential occupations based on changing maritime adaptations but had no analytical tools for directly inferring key climatic parameters during periods of the Cape's occupation. Recently, our research group...
A Thousand Years of Bone-Tool Production at Shaktoolik, Alaska (2017)
Osseous tools and debitage collected from three middens at the Shaktoolik Airport site during excavations in the summers of 2014 and 2015 were analyzed using the chaîne opératoire rather than a typological approach to assess site use over time. Relative frequencies of raw materials, tool types, and production debris were analyzed from different periods. The Early Thule/Proto-Yup’ik portion (ca. AD 1200) of the assemblage came from a midden associated with a men’s house (qasgiq), and is...
Using GIS to evaluate models of late Holocene settlement patterns in Northwest Alaska (2016)
Changing Arctic coastal settlement patterns are often linked to late Holocene environmental change. In northwest Alaska, archaeologists hypothesize that environmental variability was a major factor in both growing coastal population density between 1000 and 500 ya, and subsequent decreasing population density between 500 ya and the contact era. After 500 ya people dispersed to smaller settlements in coastal areas, and perhaps, upriver. This hypothesized pattern is based on older research that...