Late Quaternary Paleoecology and Archeology of Alaska's Alexander Archipelago

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With National Science Foundation support Dr. James Dixon and his collaborators will conduct one season of archaeological excavation and associated survey at the site of PET-408 which is located on the Prince of Wales Island on the West Coast of Alaska. In 1996 human remains and artifacts were discovered in this remote cave as a result of paleontological excavations. Two radiocarbon dates on the human bone have yielded ages in excess of 9,000 years and make the skeleton the oldest reliably dated human in Alaska or western Canada. A series of additional dates demonstrate that the cave deposits span the past ca. 40,000 years. While clearly of great potential significance, work at PET-408 to date has been limited and it is not known how the skeleton is associated with the surrounding deposits. Until this is determined is unclear how much further excavation is required. With one season of support Dr. Dixon and his collaborators will conduct further evaluation of the site and survey surrounding areas for other such occurrences. Human remains dating to the end of the last Ice age are extremely rare in North America. Organic artifacts of this age are virtually unknown from Southeast Alaska. PET-408 provides the first opportunity to understand and describe the physical characteristics of early Northwest Coast peoples and their material culture. It will also help to trace the path of the original inhabitants from Asia into the New World. Two alternative hypotheses have been proposed. Many archaeologists believe that humans moved south through central western Canada after the melting of continental glaciers. Others have suggested that the earliest human migration may have occurred with the use of watercraft along the southern margin of Beringia and the southward along the Northwest Coast of North America. This may have enabled humans to enter southern areas of the Americas prior to melting of the continental glaciers. It is important to address these hypotheses because each requires a different type of cultural adaptation by the New World founding population and the nature of this adaptation set the stage for subsequent New World cultural development. The caves of Prince of Wales Island are ideally suited for evaluating the coastal migration theory because they were ice free during the late Pleistocene, they were the foci of human activity, and they contain preserved datable organic remains.