Northern Brooks Range Caribou Hunting Architecture

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Caribou hunting has shaped the cultural landscape of the Alaska Arctic interior. In many

cases, this meant intentionally altering local landscapes to the direct advantage of caribou

hunters. These engineered landscapes are visible today in various forms of hunting architecture,

including stone drive lines, drift fences, cairns, and hunting blinds. Despite the prevalence of

these features, caribou drive systems are often only noted peripherally to nearby habitation and

processing sites. The lack of spatial analysis, dating, and exploration of the function of various

hunting architectures in northern Alaska directly impedes our understanding of these features and

how they relate to broader systems of land use through time. This poster outlines preliminary results from a recent spatiotemporal study of caribou hunting architecture in the northern foothills of the Brooks Range. The study area is situated along a significant caribou migration route of the Western Arctic Caribou Herd and was utilized over a long period by groups of North Alaska caribou hunters.  The results are

evaluated in the context of known local cultural traditions, including Ipiutak and late Precontact/early Contact Inupiaq and Dene Traditions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 41581.0