Metallurgy, Shamanism, and Ideographic Currency in Bering Strait: Scythian Descent?

Summary

This is an abstract from the "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Late Holocene Bering Strait acted as a filter, marked by intermittent material and technological cross-strait transfers; first of obsidian, ca. 3000 BCE, storage or serving ceramics adopted ca. 1000 BCE, of metallurgic iron ca. 200 CE, rare cast-bronze objects ca. 1150 CE, armor adopted across NW Alaska, with glass beads ca. 1500 CE. Figural and cosmic representation exploded with the transcontinental exchange of walrus or whale bone for Chukotkan reindeer or iron, requisite for ivory engraving. Inequality, evident in differentially elaborate burials, co-occurs with increased whaling, warfare, and transformative shamanism. Mid-twentieth-century researchers attributed circle/dot motifs as joint marking and open-work animal carvings, evidence of cognition acting over unspecified time scales, linked to pan-Eurasian cultic and Cannabis use, e.g., Altai Mountain Scythians. A modern diffusionist narrative proposes an ideological dialogue with Turkic horse-riders, entering Siberia between 600 and 1200 CE. Extensive data voids in time and space separate the Scythian/Turkic and Bering Strait societies, complicating processual interpretation. Indirect contacts include a centuries-old bronze north Chinese horse fitting within a twelfth-century house in NW Alaska, and Song dynasty coins on the Sea of Okhotsk. An indigenist perspective favors a derivation from walrus hunters recorded in southern Alaska ca. 3000 BCE.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36962.0