Exploring the Cause of the Athabaskan Migration through Isotopic and Geospatial Evidence

Summary

Linguistic and archaeological evidence suggests that Athabaskan-speaking peoples rapidly spread south from present-day Central Alaska and Northwest Canada into the Great Plains region around 1000 years ago. Historically, explanations of this important event have centered on relatively small geographic regions and traditional methodologies. This paper offers an alternative view at both a much larger scale and using distinct methods. I argue that this significant migration event was driven by the increased importance of salmon and other fish in the Athabaskan diet, a hypothesis based on my on-going central Alaskan research, which employs a compound-specific isotopic analysis of soils, landscape modeling, and predictions from human behavioral ecology. The results of this research provide not only a more nuanced understanding of late prehistoric Athabaskan subsistence and culture, but also a novel perspective on human biogeography in the Americas prior to European colonization.

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): 20550