Caribou Exploitation Dynamics and Antler Tool Production in Late Thule Occupation of the Kvichak River Drainage, SW Alaska

Summary

Late Thule occupation of the Kvichak/Naknek River drainage systems has been attributed to northward migrating human populations deriving from the Kodiak archipelago region, assumed to be salmon fishers and sea mammal hunters displaced by human population growth at the end of the Medieval Climatic Optimum and beginning of the Little Ice Age (LIA). However, caribou hunting seems also to have played an important role in some areas, particularly at the intersection of appropriate habitat and migration routes along the Kvichak drainage. Here, late Thule populations, representing ancestral groups to contemporary Yup'ik peoples, appear to have developed intensive hunting of all ages and sexes of caribou, following a classical catastrophic (non-attritional) pattern. Intensive antler and bone workshops for organic tool production may reflect centers of widespread trade networks, perhaps involving both Yup'ik and Athabascan groups in this cultural periphery zone. These patterns became attenuated with post-LIA climatic change.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Current Problems in Arctic Research

Keywords

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