Late Pleistocene Forager Adaptations at the Gateway to the New World

在William Andrefsky博士的指导下，Jeff Rasic先生将为他的博士论文进行研究。他将分析阿拉斯加西北部10个遗址出土的距今1万至1.1万年前的石器收藏品。在国家科学基金会的支持下，Rasic先生将开发另外两个数据集。他将在北美驯鹿十字路口进行挖掘，并将对几个地点的燧石文物进行地球化学表征。对北美驯鹿十字路口遗址的初步研究表明，该遗址具有良好的空间完整性、丰富的人工制品组合和良好的放射性碳样品回收潜力。这些早期狩猎采集者的营地只剩下石器和经过改造后留下的碎片，因此它们是了解他们生活方式的重要基础。这些人工制品的技术、功能和原材料来源分析旨在了解原材料是如何获得的，工具是如何制造和使用的，以及它们是如何在景观中运输的。这项研究的一个主要目标是增加对影响石器组合变化的行为和生态因素的理解，进而了解阿拉斯加西北部一些最早居民使用的行为策略。阿拉斯加北极地区在许多描述新世界最初定居的场景中都是一个关键地区，但阿拉斯加的考古记录仍然很难纳入这些论点，因为很少有遗址可靠地追溯到1万年前，而且这些人的生活方式也鲜为人知。这项研究之所以重要，有几个原因。它将以石器组合描述、放射性碳测年和一系列阿拉斯加早期遗址的燧石来源数据的形式生成和传播信息。从这项研究中得出的人类适应策略模型将有助于对新世界和西伯利亚的早期狩猎采集者进行比较，并阐明美洲定居的过程。它还将阐明过去和现在的狩猎采集社会中已知的适应多样性，并有助于培训一名有前途的年轻科学家。

Under the direction of Dr. William Andrefsky, Mr. Jeff Rasic will conduct research for his doctoral dissertation. He will analyze excavated lithic collections from ten sites in northwestern Alaska that date to between 10,000 and 11,000 years ago. With support from the National Science Foundation Mr. Rasic will develop two additional data sets. He will conduct excavations at the Caribou Crossing site and will geochemically characterize chert artifacts from several sites. Preliminary research at the Caribou Crossing site demonstrates that it has good spatial integrity, a rich artifact assemblage, and good potential for recovery of radiocarbon samples. Stone tools and the debris resulting from their modification are all that remain of these early hunter-gatherer's camps and are thus an important basis for understanding how they lived. Technological, functional and raw material source analyses of these artifacts aim to understand how raw materials were procured, how tools were manufactured and used, and how they were transported across the landscape. A primary goal of the study is to increase understanding of the behavioral and ecological factors that conditioned variation among stone tool assemblages, and in turn, to learn about the behavioral strategies used by some of the earliest inhabitants of northwestern Alaska.Arctic Alaska is a key region in many scenarios describing the initial settlement of the New World, but the Alaskan archaeological record remains difficult to incorporate into these arguments since few sites are reliably dated beyond 10,000 years ago, and the lifeways of these people are poorly known. This research is important for several reasons. It will generate and disseminate information in the form of stone tool assemblage descriptions, radiocarbon dates, and chert provenance data from a series of early Alaskan sites. Models of human adaptive strategies derived from this study will facilitate comparisons among early hunter-gatherers in the New World and Siberia and illuminate the processes by which the Americas were settled. It will also shed light on the diversity of adaptations known for hunter-gatherer societies both past and present and assist in the training of a promising young scientist.