White Eye Traditional Knowledge Camp: Exploring Prehistoric Subsistence Behavior through Gwich’in Traditional Ways of Knowing

Summary

This study explores how indigenous archaeological methods can quantitatively assess prehistoric subsistence practices in interior Alaska. Archaeological sites in Alaska are among the oldest in the Americas, providing valuable information concerning human/animal interactions. Although there are substantial amounts of archaeological information present in the literature, there is a distinct lack of indigenous ecological knowledge. The goal of this project is to combine traditional indigenous ways of knowing with archaeological methods to make inferences about past human behaviors. The traditional knowledge camp, conducted during the summer of 2017 along the banks of the Yukon River, was a collaboration between elder Paul Williams Sr. and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. It was created for elders to teach Gwich’in ways of knowing to community members and students in a traditional fish camp setting. This research utilized that learning space to explore the effects of traditional capture, processing, and cooking activities on fauna in a way which appropriately represented traditional elder knowledge. Isotopic analysis was then used to quantitatively associate the modern subsistence activities to prehistoric behavior. The research to be presented will discuss how the traditional knowledge and the isotopic analysis of this project informed about past human behaviors in the Arctic.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20397