Investigation into Initial Population Movement into the New World

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The goal of this research is to study the impact of environmental change on small-scale society in the far north during the Ice Age. Archaeology is particularly well positioned to provide relevant insight because it can trace past human behavioral responses to environmental change over long periods of time, including centuries and millennia. Within this broader context, the project will answer important research questions regarding the timing and process of initial dispersal of modern humans to the Bering Land Bridge and the peopling of the Americas. To date, not much is known regarding the earliest archaeology in this critical region. This research will shed light on how northern hunter-gatherers settled and adapted to an ever-changing northern ecosystem. The project will also enhance the education of both graduate and undergraduate students and provide important field and lab research opportunities for them as well. Additionally it will give a young female scientist, member of an underrepresented group in American Paleoindian studies, the opportunity to manage a large research team.Dr. Kelly Graf of Texas A&M University together with colleagues in the US, Canada, Great Britain and France will examine when and how humans first arrived in North American Beringia, how they settled the region, and how they responded to changing climate from the Ice Age to the recent. Research will be conducted at the multicomponent archaeological site of McDonald Creek, located in the flats of the Tanana river valley in central Alaska, an area not well understood and geographically positioned to have provided a habitable place throughout the late glacial period. Deposits at McDonald Creek are well preserved so the site's rich assemblages will yield a plethora of opportunities for specialized analyses. A combination of specialized molecular and micro-level techniques will be applied to the study of sediment, lithic artifacts, osseous artifacts, fauna and flora. Graf will lead the team of archaeologists, dating specialists, paleoecologists, and geneticists to illuminate the region's changing cultural, ecological and land use history from initial colonization through more recent occupation. This interdisciplinary team will generate new comparative methods for the study of hunter-gatherers in northern contexts, first Americans studies, and Alaskan prehistory.