People and Mammoth in Alaska

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Elephant Archaeology" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The archaeological record of Alaska documents interactions between people and mammoth and offers a different perspective from the rest of the Americas, where research has focused on hunting. Hunting probably did happen in Alaska, but evidence for it is relatively limited. Mammoth remains in Pleistocene archaeological sites instead come mostly as ivory objects and waste from manufacturing process. Ivory objects persist in later, Holocene archaeological sites, as does the memory of mammoth in the oral history of Alaskan Indigenous peoples. Mammoth was and remains a big part of Alaskan cultures. In economic terms, mammoth mattered most as a source of raw material – a function that continued after the extinction of the species, if decreasing from an intensive to more occasional use. The symbolic importance of mammoth may have followed similar pathways, from a likely important cosmological or mythological role to a more subdued presence as a spirit being in origin stories.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Elephant Archaeology

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 50943