Late Prehistoric Cultural Dynamics and the Subsistence Parameters of Whaling at Wales, Alaska

史前晚期文化动态和阿拉斯加威尔士捕鲸的生存参数

• 批准号: 0080798
• 负责人: Roger Harritt
• 金额: $ 26.69万
• 依托单位: University of Alaska Anchorage Campus
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2000
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2000-09-01 至 2005-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0080798&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Late; Prehistoric; Cultural; Dynamics; Subsistence

OPP-0080798 "Late Prehistoric Cultural Dynamics and the Subsistence Parameters of Whaling at Wales, Alaska."ABSTRACT: The Wales archaeology project focuses on a community in Alaska that, during contact period, comprised a population of at least 500 individuals. Historically the village was a primary socioeconomic center in northwest Alaska. Wales people engaged in trade and warfare with Asiatic Eskimos; these activities may have drawn the large Wales population to the location. This circumstance provides perhaps the best opportunity in western Alaska to examine the possibility of social ranking in late prehistoric Eskimo society. The results of this analysis will therefore pertain directly to sociopolitical and socioterritorial studies of hunter-gatherer groups worldwide, and they will contribute substantially to increased understanding of developing complexity in egalitarian societies as they are transformed into formally ranked social groups such as those that have been documented in the Northwest Coast culture area. Analyses of trait distributions will also examine relations between the late prehistoric Eskimo manifestations at three sites in the Wales locality. The sites contain faunal remains, which can illuminate the context in which the prehistoric human predation of whales was carried out against the background of simultaneous exploitation of various non-cetacean marine and terrestrial fauna. Preliminary findings indicate that non-cetacean sea mammals played a much larger role in the economy of Wales than has been suggested previously, and they raise a number of questions concerning the carrying capacity of the local resources in relation to the exceedingly large number of human inhabitants of the locality. Further development of the faunal database and accompanying analysis will illuminate how the large, concentrated population used local resources. The results will contribute to an increased precision in interpretations of the role of mega-fauna in prehistoric Pleistocene and Holocene human subsistence economies.

OPP-0080798“阿拉斯加威尔士的史前晚期文化动态和捕鲸生存参数。”摘要：威尔士考古项目重点关注阿拉斯加的一个社区，该社区在接触期间至少有 500 人。 历史上，该村庄是阿拉斯加西北部的主要社会经济中心。 威尔士人与亚洲爱斯基摩人进行贸易和战争；这些活动可能吸引了大量威尔士人口来到该地点。 这种情况也许为阿拉斯加西部提供了检验史前晚期爱斯基摩社会社会等级可能性的最佳机会。 因此，这项分析的结果将直接涉及世界范围内狩猎采集群体的社会政治和社会地域研究，并且它们将大大有助于加深对平等社会发展复杂性的理解，因为他们转变为正式排名的社会群体，例如西北海岸文化区记录的那些群体。对特征分布的分析还将研究威尔士地区三个地点的史前晚期爱斯基摩人表现之间的关系。 这些遗址包含动物遗骸，可以阐明史前人类在同时开发各种非鲸类海洋和陆地动物群的背景下捕食鲸鱼的背景。 初步调查结果表明，非鲸类海洋哺乳动物在威尔士经济中发挥的作用比之前认为的要大得多，并且它们提出了一些关于当地资源相对于当地人口数量过多的承载能力的问题。 动物群数据库的进一步开发和相关分析将阐明大量、集中的人口如何使用当地资源。 研究结果将有助于更准确地解释巨型动物群在史前更新世和全新世人类生存经济中的作用。