Late Pleistocene Technological Organization at Shég’ Xdaltth’í’, Central Alaska

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.

Ongoing excavations at Shég’ Xdaltth’í’ along McDonald Creek in the Tanana Flats, central Alaska, have yielded a unique assemblage of stone artifacts associated with a rich inventory of faunal elements, all dating ~13,900 calendar years ago. In this paper, we present the preliminary results of an analysis of artifacts recovered so far, both lithic and osseous. The flaked-stone assemblage is dominated by rhyolites, but other volcanics and cherts also occur. Debitage is almost exclusively very small in size, mostly late-stage biface-reduction flakes and tiny unifacial-pressure flakes (together numbering in the tens of thousands), while cortical spalls and core-reduction flakes are rare. Related tools include finished (possibly hafted) Chindadn-like bifaces, mostly with triangular or tear-drop shapes; side scrapers; flakes with marginal retouch or use-wear; a large cobble plane; and a possible burin spall (from a biface). The osseous assemblage includes a small set of worked fragments that may represent projectile technology. Overall, the assemblage appears to represent hunting and carcass-processing activities at a residential site away from sources of high-quality raw materials. The presence of Chindadn-like points and a plane, as well as the lack of microblade technology, suggests the assemblage represents an early example of the Nenana complex.

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): 36338.0