A 2000-Year-Old Family: Interpreting Site Structure and Human Behaviors at the Swan Point Site, 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.

This paper seeks to interpret the spatial patterning of the Swan Point Locus 2 site, interpreted to be a seasonal residential site. The site, located on a hill overlooking a small northern tributary of the Tanana River, consists of several features in excellent preservation. The assemblage suggests a pattern of features and artifacts consistent with a residential site. The features (housepit, cache pits, and footprint) are a unique look into domestic behaviors of the later millenia of the Northern Archaic tradition. The lithic and faunal assemblages suggest either impoverished activities, or possible adherence to later known Athabascan behaviors consistent with cleansing a site upon abandonment, rather than a reflection of economic success. The interpretive results suggest an interesting case study where the investigator's cultural biases can inform the results into very different conclusions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24469