The Archaeology of the Southern Yukon-Alaska Borderlands

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "The Archaeology of the Southern Yukon-Alaska Borderlands" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This session will discuss the archaeology of the southern Yukon-Alaska borderlands (SY-AB), defined as the region north and south of the Alaska Highway and east and west of the international border for about 100 km. It encompasses the highway corridor from the north end of Kluane Lake, Yukon, to the Tanacross, Alaska, regions, with the Wellesley Basin/Yukon-Tanana uplands to the north and the St. Elias–Wrangell Mountain range to the south. Sites such as Little John in Yukon and Linda’s Point and Nateɬ Na’ in Alaska date human occupations of the region to the Beringian Allerød (ca. 14 to 13 Kya). It is the area of origin for native copper and the crossroads of contact of the four major obsidian sources—Wiki Peak, Batza Tena, Hoodoo Mountain, and Edziza—for northwest America. The SY-AB also contains a continuous history of Holocene occupations and a rich record of Late Prehistoric and Postcontact Amerindian-European interaction. This symposium will highlight specific sites and topics of research in the SY-AB and cumulatively argue for increased attention to an often overlooked but fecund area for future archaeological research in eastern-most Beringia.