From Source to Site: Investigating Diachronic Toolstone Procurement and Land-Use in the Nenana Valley, Interior Alaska

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The archaeological record of Eastern Beringia is critical to understanding human dispersal into the Americas and the settling-in processes of the First Americans and their descendants. Investigating prehistoric landscape use and provisioning behaviors is significant in answering questions related to adaptive behaviors of prehistoric Beringians. We can begin exploring behavioral adaptation through the lens of toolstone procurement and use in the Nenana Valley, central Alaska, by characterizing the lithic landscape upon which prehistoric Alaskans provisioned themselves as well as by employing geochemical sourcing methods such as portable x-ray fluorescence (pXRF), a useful tool for characterizing non-obsidian volcanic materials (basalts, dacites, andesites and rhyolites). In an effort to define the lithic landscape and explore hunter-gatherer land-use and provisioning strategies, this paper presents results of raw material surveys conducted to map the distribution of knappable materials in the Nenana Valley, then compares results of geochemical (pXRF) analyses of artifacts from several Late Pleistocene and Holocene sites in the Nenana Valley with both primary (outcrop) and secondary (alluvium) sources within the valley to understand and explore how local (and extra-local) materials were utilized by prehistoric Alaskans in Eastern Beringia.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25174