Alaska
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Ancient Archaeological Sites in AlaskaSince the time of Alaska Statehood in 1959, many significant archaeological discoveries have revolutionized our understanding of Alaska’s most ancient people and how they first used the land. The discovery of Alaska’s earliest sites has been driven in part by the central question in New World archaeology: “When and how did the first people come to the Americas?” Until the early 1950s when the drive for Alaska’s Statehood was underway, it was not possible to accurately date archaeological sites. The development of radiocarbon dating at this time propelled the desire to find dateable sites to help answer this compelling question. In the past 50 years, over 30 archaeological sites have been found statewide that date to over 10,000 years old. Dozens more are over 8,000 years old. Some of these sites are shown on this map with dots, and eight are highlighted with photos and text. They are among the oldest of more than 15,000 reported archaeological sites in Alaska as of 2009. Most recently, ancient sites have been discovered along coastal areas that challenge the assumption that the first people came only by land. Today, as Alaska celebrates its 50th anniversary, ongoing archaeological work still holds great potential. The discovery of even more significant ancient sites could expand our understanding of Alaska as the key gateway to the Americas.
Archaeology in the Anchorage District Office:Tangle Lakes Archaeological DistrictGlennallen Field Office
You can also learn about Tangle Lakes by visiting the Glennallen Field Office page here. Lake AtnaGlennallen Field Office To learn more about the archaeology and past and future excavations at Lake Atna, click here. Archaeology in the Fairbanks District Office:Mesa SiteArctic Field Office
This ancient game lookout site sits on a high mesa-like formation on the northern flank of the Brooks Range Mountains. Discovered in the 1970s and excavated in the 1990s, it is the best documented PaleoIndian site in Alaska. Ancient hearths with associated stone artifacts date between 12,000 and 14,000 years old. Mesa Site projectile points are very similar to those made by some PaleoIndians in parts of the western continental United States. This suggests an intriguing ancient connection between the two areas. Excavations at the Raven Bluff SiteCentral Yukon Field Office ***Check back soon for new articles regarding the latest season of excavation at Raven Bluff! From BLM Frontiers, Issue 108 The Mother Lode. The Big Kahuna. An Alaska archaeologist’s dream site. When BLM Central Yukon Field Office archaeologist Bill Hedman ponders such a find, his thoughts don’t stop at a treasure trove of artifacts covering thousands of years of human history. His ideal site would also have thick soil deposition to help differentiate artifacts from different time periods. There’d be lots of bone, too, or other organic material for dating the artifacts. Oh, and add a nice breeze to keep the swarms of arctic mosquitoes down. It’s a long list, but Hedman thinks he’s found just such a site next to the Kivalina River, a 60-mile-long river that begins in the DeLong Mountains of the western Brooks Range and flows southwest to Kivalina Lagoon in the Chukchi Sea. The site is approximately 100 air miles north of Kotzebue. Hedman has christened the new site "Raven Bluff." According to Hedman, only a handful of sites this old have been found in northern Alaska. He’s hoping Raven Bluff’s unusually long record of human use will shed new light on the earliest inhabitants of North America. Hedman and a colleague discovered Raven Bluff in 2007 during the first year of a three-year archaeological survey and testing project centered on the Kivalina River. One evening a low, grassy knoll caught his attention. "It looked really prominent and isolated out here, surrounded by mostly flat, mundane tundra with the river right up against it," he recalls. "We got over there, climbed up onto the bluff, and just started finding [stone] flakes. They were everywhere!" A few quick pits revealed that, unlike the other sites they’d seen, artifacts were not confined to the surface. Many more appeared to lay buried in the soil. Hedman returned with more help in 2008. He and his crew dug five or six pits that summer. In all but one location, they were stopped close to the surface by frozen ground. At one pit, however, they dug deeper than a meter. The bottom of that pit contained abundant bone and tool-making debris in soil that was eventually dated at approximately 10,000 years old. The type and age of artifacts in that single pit already pointed to a significant archeological find. But was the Raven Bluff site confined to a small area, or was there more to find elsewhere on the knoll? To find out, Hedman returned to the site with another crew for two weeks last summer. Due to the warmer weather, the crew was able to dig deeper at a number of carefully surveyed locations across the knoll.
Standing next to a meter-deep pit on the knoll’s crest, Hedman gazes down at the Kivalina River, which rushes out of the rugged DeLong Mountains behind him and flows past this year’s camp, a jumble of yellow tents on a gravel bar, before braiding across a vast, tundra-covered plain. "What we think is going on here is that we have a landform that’s oriented perpendicular to the prevailing summer winds," Hedman says. "Summer is the season in which soils are deposited by wind. So we’ve got wind actually carrying [river] sediment up over the edge of this bluff and laying it down in different places across the landform." "You’ve got material being buried quickly, so that when the next person comes along and makes a tool, there’s already three centimeters of soil on the ground that they’re depositing their tools on." On the face of it, soil deposition wouldn’t seem to hold much allure for archaeologists eager to find artifacts. In fact, digging it out of the way requires tiring shovel work. However, if the Raven Bluff site holds the significance that Hedman thinks it does, the site’s steady accumulation of soil over hundreds and thousands of years may prove nearly as important as the rich collection of artifacts he’s already finding. That’s because the frequent and thick buildup of soil helps establish the order in which artifacts were deposited at a site. This is especially true in Alaska, where the seasonal freeze-thaw cycle can move artifacts and other material out of sequence as they go up and down through the soil column. The next and critical step—determining the age of soil layers and the artifacts found in them—requires recovering bone or other organic material, often charcoal, from the soil. These items can be analyzed with Carbon-14 dating. Here too, the Raven Bluff site is proving unusually rich. Hedman is still awaiting results from laboratory analysis of artifacts found this summer even though early indications suggest that Raven Bluff and its thick layers of soil hold important information about a human presence in North America. Raven Bluff indeed appears to be an archaeologist’s dream site.
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Links to Alaskan Museums:Anchorage Area Anchorage Museum at Rasmussen Center Alaska Museum of Natural History Fairbanks Area University of Alaska Museum of the North Kodiak Island Southeast Alaska
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Some of the prehistoric sites in this large archaeological district in central Alaska were found and excavated in the 1950s. However, scientific work at most of them has been more recent, with research continuing today. The oldest of the more than 600 recorded sites in the Tangle Lakes region are about 12,000 years old. They provide evidence of ancient hunters using an ice-dominated landscape. Lingering Pleistrocene ice remnants dammed rivers and created high elevation lakes that attracted a variety of migratory animals. Today’s hunters still come to this area for the wildlife. Most of the early sites in the Tangle Lakes area are shallowly buried and include stone tools with an occasional hearth.
Important Prehistoric Archaeological Sites in Alaska
The descriptions below describe some of the most important prehistoric sites that have been found in Alaska. Most of the sites are found on federal lands, although they are not managed by the BLM. The map at the bottom of the page shows the approximate locations of these sites.
Onion Portage Sites
In 1941, achaeologists found a series of deeply stratified sites in the Kobuk River drainage. They are included in the Onion Portage Archaeological District designated in 1978. One of the most notable sites is the Akmak locality. It was discovered in the 1960s and dates to over 11,000 years old. Akmak includes a succession of occupations from eight different cultural traditions defined by distinctive artifacts spanning several thousands of years. The Onion Portage sites provide the best evidence for understanding the distribution through time of many of the earliest cultures in western Alaska.
Broken Mammoth Site
This site overlooks the Tanana River Valley of Interior Alaska. Archaeologists found and excavated it in the 1990s. Broken Mammoth is exceptional for its age of about 13,200 years old and its preservation of animal remains. Identifiable human activities at the site include the butchering, cooking and consumption of game; tool manufacture and maintenance; caching of tools (organic and stone) and animal parts; and hide-working and clothing manufacture. This site yielded some of the best evidence of ancient Alaskans hunting and butchering mammoths over 13,000 years ago. Several artifacts found there include human-made tools crafted on mammoth tusk fragments.
Swan Point
This site was found and excavated in the 1990s, just a few miles northeast of the Broken Mammoth site. At over 14,300 years old, it is the oldest dated site in Alaska as of 2009. The oldest component of this stratified site contained microblade technology. It is similar to Duktai cultural remains from Siberia. This suggests a cultural connection across the land bridge that existed between Alaska and Siberia at the end of the last Ice Age. The site provides evidence that the earliest Alaskans hunted bison, mammoth, ancient horses and migratory waterfowl.
Dry Creek Site
This multi-component stratified site was found and excavated in the 1970s in the Nenana River drainage of central Alaska. Its oldest component, about 13,000 years old, contained small bifacial tools. These are distinct from the microblade technology found at the earlier Swan Point Site. However, a later component, dated about 12,000 years old, also contained microblades. These were made differently from the earlier Duktai-style microblades at Swan Point, suggesting a change in stone tool technology. Included at the Dry Creek Site are remains of bison, sheep and birds left by ancient hunters. The site is especially important in understanding the cultures of the late Pleistocene and early Holocene epochs, the transition between glacial and post-glacial times.
On Your Knees Cave
Found and first excavated in the mid-1990s, this cave site is on an island in Southeastern Alaska. It contains both paleontological and human remains. Discoveries include the oldest dated human remains (10,300 years ago) in all of Alaska or coastal Canada. The evidence of people on the coast at such an early time supports the Coastal Migration Theory. First advanced in the 1970s, this theory argues that at least some of the earliest people to the Americas had watercraft and migrated southward along coastal Alaska. A coastal route would have been an easier and faster way to populate the rest of the western hemisphere, including South America.
Anangula Site
This island site, found in the 1930s, was first excavated in the 1960s. Numerous volcanic ash layers two meters thick overlay the cultural deposits dated at more than 8,500 years old. This is the oldest site in the Aleutian Islands and has the first evidence of Unangan (Aleut) people in the region. Semi-subterranean houses and regionally distinct stone tools were found here.
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For more information contact:
Alaska State Office
Bureau of Land Management
222 W. 7th Ave., Unit 13
Anchorage, AK 99513
Public Room: 907-271-5960
FAX: 907-271-3684
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