Charles Holmes

GEOLOGICAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT OF THE NOGAHABARA I SITE

Interpretation of the Nogahabara I assemblage as a Late Pleistocene abandoned toolkit rests primarily on the premise of a single brief occupation at the site. The limited contextual data presented do not discount a palimpsest of noncontemporaneous assemblages in secondary contexts associated with a lag deposit. Spatial patterning, lithic assemblage patterning, artifact surface alteration, and disparate radiocarbon dates at the site, as well as geological data from the Nogahabara and nearby Kobuk dunes, indicate that the cultural material was subjected to post-depositional disturbance. Alternate hypotheses of site formation and avenues for testing these hypotheses are considered.

The Rosa-Keystone Dunes Field: The geoarchaeology and paleoecology of a late Quaternary stabilized dune field in Eastern Beringia

Stabilized sand sheets and dunes hold a remarkable amount of information on paleoenvironmental conditions under which late Quaternary landscapes evolved in northern subarctic regions. We provide the results of a project focused on understanding the development of lowland environments and ecosystems, including dunes and sand sheets, which were critical habitat for early human occupations in subarctic regions. Our study area is the Rosa-Keystone Dunes Field in the Shaw Creek Flats of the middle Tanana River basin, interior Alaska, one of the oldest continuously occupied areas in North America (14,000 cal. BP to present). The disturbance regimes of reactivated dunes and associated forest fire cycles between 12,500 and 8800 cal. BP fostered a unique early to mid-successional mixed vegetation community including herbaceous tundra, shrubs, and deciduous trees. This environment provided key habitats for large grazers and browsers, significant resources for early hunter-gatherer populations in central Alaska. After 8000 cal. BP, the expansion of black spruce and peatlands heightened landscape stability but decreased the range of local habitat for large grazers. Hunter-gatherer economic change during these periods is consistent with human responses to local and regional landscape disturbance and restructuring.

Arrival routes of first Americans uncertain

In their Perspective “Finding the first Americans” (3 November 2017, p. [592][1]), T. J. Braje et al. argue that people first entered the Americas about 25,000 to 15,000 years ago by way of the Pacific coast. We believe that current evidence yields far less certainty than Braje et al. suggest—

Holzman South: A Late Pleistocene Archaeological Site along Shaw Creek, Tanana Valley, Interior Alaska

ABSTRACT This report introduces the newly discovered Holzman South site with Pleistocene-aged components dated prior to the appearance of Clovis in North America. The site contains evidence for mammoth–human interaction, hearth activity areas, marrow extraction, and localized stone utilization in the middle Tanana Valley of Alaska, the northern gateway of the interior Canadian Ice Free Corridor.

Current evidence allows multiple models for the peopling of the Americas

Current genetic and archeological evidence allows for inland, coastal, or multiple pathways to peopling of the Americas. Some recent academic and popular literature implies that the problem of the colonization of the Americas has been largely resolved in favor of one specific model: a Pacific coastal migration, dependent on high marine productivity, from the Bering Strait to South America, thousands of years before Clovis, the earliest widespread cultural manifestation south of the glacial ice. Speculations on maritime adaptations and typological links (stemmed points) across thousands of kilometers have also been advanced. A review of the current genetic, archeological, and paleoecological evidence indicates that ancestral Native American population expansion occurred after 16,000 years ago, consistent with the archeological record, particularly with the earliest securely dated sites after ~15,000 years ago. These data are largely consistent with either an inland (ice-free corridor) or Pacific coastal routes (or both), but neither can be rejected at present. Systematic archeological and paleoecological investigations, informed by geomorphology, are required to test each hypothesis.

The Keystone Dune Site: A Bølling-Allerød Hunting Camp in Eastern Beringia

ABSTRACT The Keystone Dune site, in central Alaska, contains a well-preserved archaeological occupation that dates to 13,430–13,230 cal yr BP. Archaeological excavations resulted in the recovery of features, and materials include hearths, faunal and lithic specimens, macrobotanical remains, and ocher. These were analyzed and interpreted to reconstruct past activities conducted at the site. Keystone Dune was most likely used for a short time, in the context of a wapiti hunt, and can be placed within a larger economic and mobility system of eastern Beringian people during the Bølling-Allerød chronozone. By continuing to document the archaeological and paleoenvironmental records of the early Beringians, we contribute to a refinement of the models and ideas of human dispersal during the Pleistocene.