Geochemical Characterization and Raw Material Procurement at McDonald Creek, 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.

Around 14,000 years ago, modern humans dispersed into eastern Beringia. McDonald Creek, located in the Tanana Valley, central Alaska, is a significant part of characterizing this dispersal as one of the earliest known sites in eastern Beringia. This site posesses three cultural occupations dating to 13,800, 12,700, and 5,000 kcal BP, respectively. McDonald Creek’s lithic record is significant in understanding how the earliest Beringians established themselves on subarctic landscapes and how subsequent hunter-gatherers in central Alaska adapted to dynamic Late Pleistocene and Holocene environmental regimes. Portable x-ray fluorescence (pXRF) studies are useful for exploring human behavior reflected in lithic technologies, including toolstone provisioning patterns, mobile strategies, and landscape use. This presentation reports results of pXRF analyses of non-obsidian fine-grained volcanics (e.g., rhyolites, dacites, basalts, and andesites) present in the McDonald Creek lithic assemblages, building on a small but growing number of Beringian geochemical sourcing studies. Results of this study provide valuable insight into the adaptive strategies of prehistoric Alaskans that repeatedly occupied the Tanana Valley from the Allerød interstadial through the middle Holocene.

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): 32695