A Preliminary Spatial Analysis of the Late Pleistocene Components at the McDonald Creek Site, Interior Alaska

Summary

This is an abstract from the "McDonald Creek and Blair Lakes: Late Pleistocene-Holocene Human Activity in the Tanana Flats of Central Alaska" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The McDonald Creek site (FAI-2043) is located about 30 miles south of Fairbanks, Alaska, in the Tanana Flats. Results of archaeological testing and excavations between 2013 and 2019 identified three distinct archaeological components, Components 1, 2, and 3 dating to about 13.8 ka, 12.7 ka, and 5 ka, respectively. Approximately 50,000 pieces of archaeological materials have been found in situ with three-point provenience, and most of these come from the earliest component. The high density of artifacts and features in the early components at McDonald Creek provide a rare opportunity to gain insight into site use, adaptive strategies, and settlement organization of these early inhabitants of Beringia. For this poster, we model the artifacts from Components 1 and 2 using ArcGIS and ArcScene to display both 2D and 3D maps of each component separately and in relation to each other. Then we use these models to document horizontal artifact clustering in relation to field-identified features to document activity areas and test the degree of vertical separation between components.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• McDonald Creek and Blair Lakes: Late Pleistocene-Holocene Human Activity in the Tanana Flats of Central Alaska

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33261