Early Humans on the Bering Land Bridge: A Proposal to Investigate the Fluted-Point Site at Serpentine Hot Springs, Alaska

在国家科学基金会的支持下，Ted Goebel博士和他的同事。凯利·格拉夫和迈克尔·沃特斯，在阿拉斯加白令陆桥国家保护区的蛇形温泉附近调查一个新的史前考古遗址。这个遗址被认为在埋藏的环境中含有凹槽的矛尖，初步放射性碳可以追溯到大约12000年前。因此，蛇形温泉遗址代表了白令海陆桥上第一个已知的冰河时代遗址，它代表了阿拉斯加第一个从可确定日期的背景中恢复槽点的遗址。在北美温带地区，属于克洛维复合体的早期凹槽点代表了人类在北美最早的明确证据。通过他们在蛇形温泉的研究，戈贝尔的团队解决了以下研究问题：阿拉斯加的凹槽点比北美温带的克洛维斯凹槽点更早，年龄相同，还是更年轻？它们代表了在克洛维斯前时代，技术的扩散或人们从白令陆桥地区向南迁移到温带的北美，还是代表了在克洛维斯后时代，从南到北的反向扩散或反向迁移？为了解决这些问题，戈贝尔的团队正在对该遗址进行大面积挖掘，从保存完好的特征中恢复更多的木炭样本，增加人工制品和动物组合的规模，促进详细的技术和生存分析，并与白令陆桥其他早期遗址进行比较。这个研究项目将有助于了解北美最早的一些人，并有助于了解那个时代的人们是如何相互作用的。它还为考古学家提供了一个机会，让他们与阿拉斯加西部的当代阿拉斯加原住民一起工作，并向他们教授他们地区的早期历史，它为一位年轻的女科学家提供了重要的研究经验，它还提供了关于人类如何适应冰河时代晚期迅速变暖的气候的信息。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Ted Goebel, along with his colleagues Drs. Kelly Graf and Michael Waters, investigate a new prehistoric archaeological site near Serpentine Hot Springs, Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, Alaska. This site is thought to contain fluted spear points in a buried context preliminarily radiocarbon dated to about 12,000 calendar years ago. As such, the Serpentine Hot Springs site represents the first site known to date to the Ice Age on the Bering Land Bridge, and it represents the first site in Alaska where fluted points have been recovered from a datable context. In temperate North America, early fluted points assigned to the Clovis complex represent the earliest unequivocal evidence of humans in North America. Through their research at Serpentine Hot Springs, Goebel's team addresses the following research questions: Are fluted points in Alaska earlier than, the same age, or younger than Clovis fluted points in temperate North America? Do they represent the diffusion of technology or migration of people from the Bering Land Bridge area south to temperate North America during pre-Clovis times, or do they represent back-diffusion or back-migration from the south to north in post-Clovis times? To address these questions, Goebel's team is conducting a block excavation of the site, to recover additional charcoal samples from preserved features and to increase the sizes of artifact and faunal assemblages, facilitating detailed technological and subsistence analyses and comparisons with other early sites in Beringia. This research project will contribute to the knowledge of some of the earliest people in North America, and help understand how people of that time may have interacted. It also offers an opportunity for archaeologists to work with and teach contemporary Native Alaskan groups of western Alaska about the early history of their region, it offers an important research experience to a young female scientist, and it provides information about how humans adapted to rapidly warming climate during the late Ice Age.