Bluefish Caves Revisited: Testing a Potential Pre-Clovis Site in Eastern Beringia

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.

Originally excavated by Jacques Cinq-Mars in the 1970s and 1980s, Bluefish Caves, Yukon Territory, yielded artifacts and faunal remains. Cinq-Mars’s chronology for human occupation at the site dates to as early as ca. 24 ka and has been corroborated by AMS 14C-dated cut-marked bones. These findings support the genetic “Beringian standstill” model, which proposes an isolated human population persisted in Beringia during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Challenges to stratigraphic integrity, taphonomy, and bone modifications have hindered the acceptance of Bluefish Caves in the Pre-Clovis archaeological canon. In 2019, we tested Cave III to assess site formation processes and the potential for recovery of sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA). Initial processing of sedaDNA samples indicates recovery of sufficient nucleic acids for identification of multiple taxa, providing a robust picture of LGM and post-LGM paleoenvironments in the region. We returned in 2022 to test the area in front of the Cave IV, not previously excavated by Cinq-Mars. Excavations exposed a ~1 m thick deposit of loess containing remains of late-Pleistocene fauna. Micromorphological analysis, combined with a significant radiocarbon dating program and extensive faunal analysis, allows us to understand the site formation processes and test the stratigraphic integrity of deposits at Cave IV.

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): 37428.0