Adding to the Paleoenvironmental Framework for Early Settlement of Interior Alaska: New Perspectives on Local Changes in Vegetation and Hydrology from Plant Wax N-Alkanes

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology of Alaska, the Gateway to the Americas" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Many paleoenvironmental reconstructions from interior Alaska are based on pollen assemblages from lacustrine cores, which are sometimes challenging to relate directly to terrestrial conditions experienced by early human occupants. Here we use compound-specific stable isotope analysis of plant wax n-alkanes (δ13C wax and δDwax values) to infer local, site-specific conditions on spatial scales relevant to humans. This molecular approach contributes to the paleoenvironmental framework for human colonization and occupation of this region from the Late Glacial period (~14,000–11,000 cal yr BP) through the Holocene. Our δ13Cwax values become more positive from the Late Glacial to the Holocene, interpreted as heightened evapotranspiration and/or evaporative stress on plants over time. Both δ13Cwax and δDwax values are more tightly clustered during the Late Glacial than the Holocene, reflecting more consistent evaporative conditions across these sites during early human settlement. The Younger Dryas (12,900–11,700 cal yr BP) stands out as a period of lower evaporative stress and likely more vegetative homogeneity These results indicate that several interior sites experienced large changes in effective moisture and evaporation over time, which may have played a larger role in floral and faunal shifts and human paleoecology than other environmental factors, such as temperature.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeology of Alaska, the Gateway to the Americas   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36991.0