ARCHEOLOGY AND ECOLOGY OF THE ARCTIC SLOPE 



OF ALASKA 



By Ralph S. Solecki 

 Archeologist, River Basin Surveys, Bureau of American Ethnology 



[With 6 plates] 



Of great interest to students of prehistory in America is the prob- 

 lem of man's migrations from the Old World to the New. It is 

 virtually undenied that as far as we know, prehistoric man entered 

 America from Eurasia. Until lately one of the most baffling situations 

 was the fact that we had little acceptable evidence to substantiate any 

 claims for his antiquity in Alaska, the threshold of entry. 



We can now state definitely that reliable evidence has been found 

 in various parts of Alaska and the Yukon Territory that validates 

 assumptions that pre-Eskimo and pre-Athapascan Indian peoples lived 

 there. However, since the scope of the subject is broad, and in view 

 of the recency of the finds, total reports have not been made available 

 to date. Therefore we shall deal with one facet of the problem in 

 the Arctic with which the writer is most familiar. This is the inland 

 archeology of northern Alaska, or that part of the territory aptly 

 called the "north slope," which lies between the Brooks Range and 

 the Arctic Ocean (fig. 1 ) . We have already sketched the anthropology 

 of the north slope in a brief report and have written a preliminary 

 report on the archeology of two rivers in the western part of the same 

 region (Solecki, 1950a, 1950b). These reports were based on data 

 obtained during a field trip made during the summer of 1949. 



Significant archeological finds were made during the summer of 

 1950 in northern Alaska, but they cannot be presented in this paper 

 because all the data are not yet available. These data include the dis- 

 covery of artifacts typologically similar to Giddings' (1949) Cape 

 Denbigh Flint Complex near Anaktuvuk Pass, and the finding of 

 polyhedral cores and Folsomlike projectile points in the headwaters 

 of the Noatak River. Although the additional archeological data 

 have broadened our perspective of the cultural prehistoi*y north of 

 the Arctic Circle, the ecological background has not been changed. 



The interrelationships between man and the plant and animal king- 

 doms, existing in a similar geographic and climatic environment, 

 are of interest to students of Eurasiatic- American cross ties, and an 

 appraisal of ecological factors is a necessary adjunct to the study. 



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