People
Archeologist Kelly Graf documenting a stratigraphic profile.
Texas A&M University
Ice-Age Humans of the Bering Land Bridge: Archeology of Serpentine Hot Springs, Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, Alaska
Contributed by Ted Goebel, Center for the Study of the First Americans, Texas A&M University
Introduction During summer 2009 the Center for the Study of the First Americans (at Texas A&M University) and National Park Service had the opportunity to investigate what may be the first Ice-Age archeological site yet found in the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve. The site is located near Serpentine Hot Springs, and it contains stone tools and animal bones preliminarily dated to about 12,000 calendar years ago.
Background Our research focuses on the first peopling of the Americas during the Ice Age (or Pleistocene) period. We are interested in chronicling and explaining the origins of the first Americans. From where did they come? When did they disperse from northeast Asia to Beringia? How did they spread from Alaska to the rest of the Americas? Our research into these questions covers three continents and numerous scientific fields, not just archeology but also geology, paleontology, paleobotany, and even human genetics.
Much of the debate surrounding the origins of the first Americans is centered on the significance of the Clovis culture, the earliest unequivocal, well-documented archeological culture in North America. Clovis dates to about 13,000 calendar years ago, and Clovis archeological sites contain distinctive bifacial points with concave bases and flutes (or grooves) that extend up the faces of the points. Clovis people surely hunted mammoth and mastodon, as well as other large animals like bison and horse. They were very mobile people, rarely staying in one place for long. Despite years of searching, however, we still do not understand the origins of the Clovis culture. Did Clovis spread directly and quickly from the Bering Land Bridge area? Or did Clovis develop in situ in North America, from a so-far poorly documented ancestor? These are some of the questions that drive our archeological research in the Bering Land Bridge area.
Clovis-like fluted points have been found in Alaska, but never in northeast Asia. To date, there are at least 20 occurrences of fluted points across north and northwest Alaska, and these points are lanceolate in shape, have concave bases, and are clearly fluted on both faces, much like Clovis points to the south. However, most of these points were surface finds, a few were from shallowly buried contexts that cannot or have not been reliably dated, and none were associated with clearly dated features like fire hearths. So, this is our problem: fluted points occur in Alaska, but so far we do not know whether they are older, the same age as, or younger than Clovis fluted points in mid-latitude North America.
A recently discovered archeological site near Serpentine Hot Springs in the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve is likely to change all of this. National Park Service archeologists Chris Young, Sabra Gilbert-Young, and Robert Gal discovered this site in 2005, finding a basal fragment of a fluted point on the surface of the ground. Their preliminary “test-pit” excavations yielded a small assemblage of stone flakes, one of them a “channel flake” presumably removed from the face of a bifacial point as it was being fluted. These were associated with a dense concentration of wood charcoal, which was radiocarbon dated to about 10,000 radiocarbon years ago, or about 12,000 calendar years ago, one-thousand years after the time of Clovis in the south.
Field Objectives and Methods In July-August of 2009, archeologists from the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Texas A&M University (TAMU) returned to Serpentine Hot Springs with Robert Gal of NPS, to establish the stratigraphic context and age of the site’s cultural layer, firmly date it, and define its lateral extent across the site. Another important objective was to learn whether fluted points occurred in the buried cultural layer.
Our team included Sergei Slobodin, archeologist from the Russian Academy of Sciences in Magadan, Kelly Graf, archeologist from TAMU, as well as Aluki Brower, a student-intern from the Bering Straits Native Corporation. Michael Waters provided geoarcheological expertise, and TAMU graduate students John Blong and Josh Keene participated in the field work. Ted Goebel directed the project. During our time at Serpentine Hot Springs, we mapped the site, collected artifacts exposed on the surface of the ground, excavated a small block in the vicinity of the original fluted-point discovery, and excavated several test pits to define the site’s boundaries. Funding for our project was provided by the Shared Beringia Heritage Program (NPS) and Center for the Study of the First Americans.
Preliminary Results of Fieldwork The fluted-point site is in an open tundra setting, on a high ridge overlooking the floodplain of Hot Springs Creek and Serpentine Hot Springs. On the site there are two areas of dense artifact concentrations. One is a locality were artifacts are concentrated on the surface of the ground, and the other is the location of the buried site, where the initial fluted point was found in 2005. The two localities are about 100 m apart; both have yielded fluted points.
Our first task in 2009 was to collect data for a topographic map of the site, and to collect surface artifacts. We recorded the locations of all finds using a total-station laser theodolite. From the surface we recovered 117 stone artifacts, including two fluted point fragmentss, several fragments of bifaces and bifacial points, and a few blades and microblades.
Our test-pit excavations helped define the geologic context of the buried site, and to define the site’s lateral boundaries. We dug seven test pits in the area of the buried site, included four 1x1-meter pits and three 50x50-centimeter pits. In them we recovered numerous artifacts in buried contexts, mostly flakes and small blades (possibly microblades). We identified two distinct ancient soils (or paleosols), which were separated by about 5-10 cm of unweathered silt and gruss (angular rock debris). Most of the artifacts come from the lower paleosol, but we also recovered a few from the upper paleosol. It is still not clear whether these are the result of a later human occupation or if they were moved naturally from the lower paleosol, through soil creep or animal burrowing.
We also excavated a 2x3-meter block at the site of the initial fluted-point discovery. Here, again, we were able to discern two paleosols. We recovered artifacts from both paleosols, but disturbances often made it difficult to tease the two apart. Nonetheless, we were able to identify, photograph, and map a burned feature associated with the lower paleosol. The feature contained much charcoal and burnt rock, as well as hundreds of small bits of animal bone, many of them charred. Bryan Hockett, a zooarcheologist with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, has looked at the bones and identified them simply as “ungulate,” which means they could be from any number of large-bodied northern mammal, for example musk ox, caribou, or even bison. We also recovered the fragment of a bone tool, perhaps the butt-end of a spear point or knife; however, this specimen has yet to be closely analyzed in the laboratory.
Besides several dozen flakes, we recovered a few small blades (possible microblades) and a channel flake from a fluted point in the feature. We also found the basal corner of a fluted point in the excavation, about 10 cm from the charred feature. Other tools from the 2-x-meter block excavation include a biface fragment and the tip fragment of a bifacial point. Nearby test pits yielded additional channel flakes and small blades, as well as a core tablet from a small blade core (but not one that was obviously wedge-shaped).
Conclusions Given the work we have accomplished thus far, we offer the following conclusions.
(1) The Serpentine Hot Springs fluted-point site contains contains a buried cultural layer which dates to c. 12,000 calendar years ago, the very end of the Ice Age. A later cultural layer may also exist, but this needs to be confirmed through more analyses and excavations.
(2) The site contains preserved features and faunal remains, so that continued excavation and analysis of these remains will likely provide our first direct glimpse into the subsistence pursuits of these earliest known inhabitants of the Bering Land Bridge area.
(3) Elements of fluted-point technology as well as blade/microblade technology seem to co-occur at the site, even around the same dated feature.
How do these new findings relate to the bigger questions of Clovis origins and the peopling of the Americas? At Serpentine Hot Springs, fluted points seem to post-date the time of Clovis in temperate North America by about 1000 years, suggesting that this technology spread north into Alaska from an American (not Asian) source. The occurrence of fluted points with microblades, which are typically considered to be of North American and northeast Asian origin, respectively, suggest that the American fluting technology was “grafted” onto a more ancient Beringian microblade technology. Its presence on the Bering Land Bridge may not have been the simple result of a population dispersal from central North America, but instead the result of a more complex transmission of technology through pre-existing populations.
We intend on returning to Serpentine Hot Springs in 2010 to further investigate this significant yet complex archeological site. We need to excavate larger areas of the site, to test our immediate conclusions and to increase our samples of artifacts, features, and faunal remains so that we can further interpret not just who these early people were and from where they came, but also how they made a living on the Bering Land Bridge at the end of the Ice Age. |
Did You Know?
More than 400 species of plants have been listed at the in Bering Land Bridge National Preserve. Many of them evolved in ancient Beringia and spread into Asia or North America.