Archaeology of Alaska, the Gateway to the Americas
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Archaeology of Alaska, the Gateway to the Americas" at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
For decades, research in Alaska has been a cornerstone for our understanding of the late Pleistocene and Holocene peopling of Beringia, Siberia, and the Americas. Recent focus on a period of human isolation, called the Beringian Standstill Hypothesis, for example, has been supported almost entirely by work done in the state. Additionally, regional studies in the state focused on the movement of people and technologies during the Holocene encompassing sites from areas as large as most states. This session includes papers dedicated to current studies in Alaska with emphasis on prehistory, paleoecology, and human-environment interaction.
Other Keywords
Paleoindian and Paleoamerican •
Lithic Analysis •
arctic •
Hunter-Gatherers/Foragers •
Geoarchaeology •
ancient DNA •
Environment and Climate •
Chronology •
Zooarchaeology •
Dating Techniques
Geographic Keywords
Alberta (State / Territory) •
Yukon Territory (State / Territory) •
British Columbia (State / Territory) •
Alaska (State / Territory) •
Saskatchewan (State / Territory) •
Manitoba (State / Territory) •
Canada (Country) •
Northwest Territories (State / Territory) •
North America (Continent) •
North America: Arctic and Subarctic
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-14 of 14)
- Documents (14)
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Adding to the Paleoenvironmental Framework for Early Settlement of Interior Alaska: New Perspectives on Local Changes in Vegetation and Hydrology from Plant Wax N-Alkanes (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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. Many paleoenvironmental reconstructions from interior Alaska are based on pollen assemblages from lacustrine cores, which are sometimes challenging to relate directly to terrestrial conditions experienced by early human occupants. Here we use compound-specific stable isotope analysis of plant wax n-alkanes (δ13C wax and δDwax values) to...
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Archaeological Recovery of Late Pleistocene Hair and Environmental DNA from Interior Alaska (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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. Ancient hair and remnant plant DNA are important environmental proxies that preserve for millennia in specific archaeological contexts. However, recovery has been rare from late Pleistocene sites and more may be found if deliberately sought. Once discovered, singular hair fragments are not easily identified to taxa through comparative...
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Assessment of the Archaeological Record for the Tanana Valley, Alaska, and a New Cultural Synthesis (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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...
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Bluefish Caves Revisited: Testing a Potential Pre-Clovis Site in Eastern Beringia (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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...
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The Carpenter Quarry Site: A Unique Salvage Excavation Strategy (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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...
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Ethnoarchaeological Exploration of the Western Brooks Range, Alaska (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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....
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Freshwater and Anadromous Fishing in Ice Age Beringia (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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....
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The Hess Creek Site and Implications for Livengood and Yukon River Archaeology (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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...
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Late Pleistocene Technological Organization at Shég’ Xdaltth’í’, Central Alaska (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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. Ongoing excavations at Shég’ Xdaltth’í’ along McDonald Creek in the Tanana Flats, central Alaska, have yielded a unique assemblage of stone artifacts associated with a rich inventory of faunal elements, all dating ~13,900 calendar years ago. In this paper, we present the preliminary results of an analysis of artifacts recovered so far,...
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The Porcupine Tail Site Complex and the Concentration of the Archaeological Record on Isolated Hills of Interior Alaska (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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 any landscape tends to be differentially concentrated on specific landforms, because such landforms favor both the recurrence of human activities over successive periods of time and the postdepositional preservation of their material traces. In this paper we present results from recent excavations at two...
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Site Stratigraphy and Radiocarbon Dating at the Shég’ Xdaltth’í’ Site in Central Alaska (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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. Shég’ Xdaltth’í’ is located approximately 55 km southeast of Fairbanks, Alaska, approximately 55 km northwest of the Broken Mammoth / Mead/Holzman / Swan Point complex of sites, and about 18 km northwest of Upward Sun River. Continuing excavations have provided tens of thousands of material remains, consisting mostly of lithic...
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Sixty Years of Research at the Donnelly Ridge Site (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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. In 1964, F. H. West investigated Donnelly Ridge, subsequently using material from there and a few other interior Alaskan sites to define what he termed the Denali complex. In later years, numerous archaeologists returned to Donnelly Ridge for monitoring and limited testing, but nothing substantial was done to synthesize all the data or...
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Technological Origins of the Denali Complex (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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. Our understanding of the origins of early Alaskan assemblage variability is challenged by the co-occurrence or absence of two key lithic technologies—microblades and bifacial projectile points—and the variety of morphologies and production strategies within these categories. Alaskan archaeological complexes that existed prior to the...
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Terminal Pleistocene Human Occupations in the North Pacific Basin of Alaska: Results and Implications of Test Excavation at Nataeł Na’ (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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. Nataeł Na’ is an ancient buried multicomponent site located in the northern Copper River Basin. During the 2017–2018 field seasons NPS Archaeologist Lee Reininghaus led test excavations at Nataeł Na’ revealing a combustion feature dating to ~12,200–11,400 cal BP. In 2019 a team from the Center for the Study of the First Americans at...