| Alaska Regional Office | U.S. Department of the Interior | |
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| Cultural Resources Team | National Park Service |
| National
Historic Landmarks in Alaska |
Iyatayet
Site, Shaktoolik |
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Cape Denbigh Peninsula, Alaska |
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| National
Register Number: 66000158 Resource Type: Site Property Type: Designated: January 20, 1961 |
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| The
Iyatayet site, located on Norton Bay and excavated by pioneer Arctic archaeologist
J.L. Giddings, has three separate time periods of occupation. At the bottom,
dating to about 5,000 years ago, he found small, beautifully chipped tools,
which he christened as the Denbigh Flint Complex and recognized as ancestral
to later expressions of Eskimo culture in Alaska. The overlying Norton culture
marked the first appearance of pottery and large permanent winter villages
in the Arctic, while the upper level, named Nukleet, was dated to the last
millennium. Giddings’
discovery of the Denbigh Flint Complex did not just represent a local
culture, but was later acknowledged as one variation of the Arctic Small
Tool tradition, a prehistoric way of life subsequently found along the
entire coastline of North America from the Bering Sea to the northernmost
tip of Greenland. |
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