Arctic Ceramic Traditions and Late Holocene Social Interaction; Revisiting Giddings’ Arctic Woodland Culture

Summary

In 1952, J.L. Giddings defined the Arctic Woodland Culture as a unique northwestern Alaskan inland lifeway combining elements of both Eskimo and Athabascan cultures between approximately 800 BP and the contact era. He proposed that Arctic Woodland people were closely tied to both coast and interior through seasonal movements and exchange systems, and hypothesized these ties made a semi-permanent lifeway along the river possible. Subsequent research refined local chronologies and raised new questions about coastal-inland relationships during the socially and environmentally dynamic Late Holocene period. This paper explores evidence for coastal-interior interaction in northwest Alaska through analyses of ceramic distribution patterns. I will review results of new fieldwork on Giddings' sites along the Kobuk River and ceramic compositional analyses of his collections, along with new ceramic thermo-luminescence dates from Arctic Woodland sites. My results point to several distinct patterns of coastal-inland interaction that changed over time, supporting Giddings' hypothesis that a distinct Kobuk River ceramic tradition existed during the Arctic Woodland period. These findings have broad implications for Late Holocene Arctic social interaction and change.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Envisioning and Re-envisioning Arctic Archaeology: The Enduring Legacies of J. Louis Giddings (1909-1964)

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