Restructuring the Occupation of Near Ipiutak/Norton at Point Hope: Sedentism, Warfare, and Whaling at Point Hope?

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Current Research and Challenges in Arctic and Subarctic Cultural Heritage Studies" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeological discourse can remain in thrall to classificatory and theoretical constructs. “Near Ipiutak” was framed by Larsen and Rainey in 1948 within the penumbra of the hundreds of Ipiutak ruins, <1 km distant, that resulted from an aceramic, non-whaling habitus and aestheticized mortuary practice. In the monograph “Ipiutak and the Arctic Whale-Hunting Culture,” the two cultural matrices offered a contrast of “primitive” and inferentially evolved characteristics: Ipiutak, the presumed ur-kultur, had to precede its successor, Near Ipiutak, whose ceramic, slate use and whaling were complexity-emergent properties. This view of Near Ipiutak is increasingly shopworn as recognized by Larsen in 1982, who relocated within Norton. Reanalyses of the legacy text further refine the sequence and calibrated 14C ages between 100 BC and AD 300 establish that Near Ipiutak preceded Ipiutak by more than 300 years. Revising the prior cursory discussion, Near Ipiutak at Point Hope is more significant: including a fifth of the graves, several houses, and extensive midden, providing well-contextualized, dated evidence for warfare, not previously emphasized. Whaling remains inferential, based on two whaling harpoon heads within graves, with middens lacking archaeofauna. Likely, Ipiutak developed in situ from Norton ancestry, reoriented toward the interior, forswearing pottery and whaling for caribou.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Current Research and Challenges in Arctic and Subarctic Cultural Heritage Studies   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38630.0