Recent Archaeological Investigations of Wiki Peak and the Beaver Creek Drainage

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of the Southern Yukon-Alaska Borderlands" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The headwaters of Beaver Creek are located in the Nutzotin Mountains in northeastern Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. Beaver Creek originates at Beaver Lake near the community of Chisana and flows east to the to the Alaska-Yukon border before heading north to join the White River. An important feature of the Beaver Creek headwaters is the Wiki Peak obsidian source. Wiki Peak obsidian has been found at some of the oldest archaeological sites in Eastern Beringia and continued to be transported over long distances until the late Holocene. This implies a long history of human activity in the Beaver Creek area. Another unique attribute of the headwaters area is the presence of an extensive tephra layer known as White River Ash. Two eruptions, stemming from Mt. Churchill approximately 1147 and 1830 cal BP, are thought have caused large-scale ecological changes and may have caused the displacement of people living in the area. Past archaeological research in the headwaters area has been geographically limited in scope. Recent investigations by the National Park Service were focused on providing a more comprehensive view of past human interactions with the headwaters of Beaver Creek and the greater Wiki Peak landscape.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• The Archaeology of the Southern Yukon-Alaska Borderlands

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40256.0