Spatial Arrangement of the Northern Archaic Component at the McDonald Creek Site, Central 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.

McDonald Creek is a multicomponent campsite located in the central Tanana Valley south of Fairbanks, Alaska. In addition to late Pleistocene components, archaeological excavations at the site have uncovered a productive Northern Archaic occupation dating to the middle Holocene. A technological analysis of the lithic assemblage has delineated specific tool production areas across the site. Late stage bifacial tools of different raw materials were resharpened in discrete areas. Notably, microblade core reduction debris of the same materials were also found in the individual debitage clusters. This indicates that multiple technologies were concurrent at the scale of single behavioral events. Site activities were repetitive and represent only a small range of behavior over a short visit. The middle Holocene component at the site is very different than earlier occupations which exhibit longer term habitation and subsistence activities.

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

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32270