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博士与他的同事Kelly Graf博士和Michael Waters博士一起调查了阿拉斯加白令陆桥国家级保护区蛇形温泉附近的一个新的史前考古遗址。这一遗址被认为在埋藏的环境中含有凹槽的矛尖，初步认为放射性碳可以追溯到大约12,000年前。因此，蛇形温泉遗址是迄今为止已知的白令陆桥上冰河时代的第一个遗址，也是阿拉斯加第一个从可测年环境中发现凹槽点的遗址。在北美温带地区，克洛维斯复合体的早期凹槽点是北美人类的最早确凿证据。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：阿拉斯加的凹槽点是早于、同年龄还是早于北美温带的克洛维斯凹槽点？它们代表了前克洛维斯时代白令陆桥地区向南向北美温带地区的技术扩散或迁徙，还是代表了后克洛维斯时代从南向北的反向扩散或反向迁徙？为了解决这些问题，戈贝尔的团队正在对该遗址进行分块挖掘，从保存下来的地物中恢复更多的木炭样本，并增加人工制品和动物群组合的大小，以便进行详细的技术和生存分析，并与贝林贾的其他早期遗址进行比较。这项研究项目将有助于了解北美一些最早的人的知识，并有助于了解那个时代的人可能是如何互动的。它还为考古学家提供了一个与阿拉斯加西部当代阿拉斯加原住民群体合作并向他们讲授该地区早期历史的机会，它为年轻的女科学家提供了重要的研究经验，并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.