Little John Site

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The Littlejohn site is one of the oldest sites of human tools in around 14,000 years ago Canada , and that ensures the first Nenana complex belongs. The site is located near the Alaska Highway , 12 km north of the village Beaver Creek and about 2 km from the border between Alaska and Yukon removed. It occupies most of a small hill on the upper reaches of Mirror Creek, more precisely with a view from the north of Cheejil Niik or Grayling Creek. According to the Borden system , the site was given the abbreviation KdVo-6 .

In collaboration with the White River First Nation from Beaver Creek, who lives in the western Yukon, archaeological excavations were carried out from 2002 to 2009 in the valleys of the Mirror and Scottie Creek in the drainage area of ​​the upper Tanana River . Carved animal bones in connection with stone chippings allowed a dating to about 12,000 BC. Another layer goes back as far as 44,000 years, but there was no evidence of human presence in it.

The cave at Ha Tuh Nahk'eet, a historic Scottie Creek Dineh hunting camp. It contained the Chindadn points , teardrop-shaped stone blades that are characteristic of the Nenana complex .

Find history and interpretation

The cave was first explored in 2002 as part of the Scottie Creek Culture History Project , which began in 1992 . This was done in collaboration with the White River First Nation of the Yukon and the Alaskan Village Councils of Northway , Tetlin and Tanacross . The first excavations in the area took place in 2003–2004, others followed in 2006–2009. In the dialect spoken in the Scottie Creek area and belonging to Upper Tanana Dineh, the area is called Haah Tu Taiy (roughly: 'path at the end of the hill').

In agreement with the White River people, the site was named "Little John" in 2006. It was named after Klaa Dii Cheeg ('His hand falls'), who was known as 'White River Johnny'. He is a significant ancestor of today's First Nation and was known as "Little John". He had lived and hunted many times in the area around the site until he died in 1984. His children Bessie John and Joseph Tommy Johnny had shown the archaeologist the site when he and students were looking for a suitable practice site to gain initial excavation experience.

Glaciation phase, stratigraphy

The glaciers of the Nutzotin – Wrangell – Elias chain , which are located around 65 km southwest of the Little John Site , extended into the area around the site in the last Ice Age . But this expansion ended around 50 km southeast of it. Around 11500 BC The glaciers retreated and 500 years later the area was again free of ice up to the White River , about 150 km south-east. Therefore, the area belonged to Beringia , which was ice-free during the entire Ice Age , an assumption that is supported by finds of horses, mammoths and rangifers about one kilometer away. A local species of horse, Equus lambei, has been dated to 20,660 + - 100 years.

On a base layer of regolith there are deposits of the former glacier, which, however, were dated differently, namely to an age of 140,000 and 70,000 years. Loess sediments up to 60 cm thick are lying on top . Above it is a 10 to 20 cm thick layer of debris, typical of boreal forests , which is in turn covered by another, volcanic layer that goes back to a volcanic eruption that occurred around 100 AD. Finally, the whole thing covers a 1 to 2 cm thin organic layer.

The stratigraphy is obscured by basins more than a meter deep and eroding hilltops. In addition, there are water flows, permafrost and waste. This caused the archaeologists to divide the area into four zones. The western part, where the layers are particularly thin, covers the south-western side of the hill, where the deposits are between 5 and 30 cm thick. The permafrost section, where permafrost soil is only a few centimeters below the surface, covers the north-facing flank of the hill. The Rockfall area, which is characterized by large rocks lying around, which in turn lie on brown earth (Brunisol) and loess, runs on a north-south axis through the middle of the site. The eastern section, a large depression that extends eastward and has a layer of sediment over a meter thick, goes back particularly far in time. There animal remains were found mixed with stone artefacts.

Fauna, dating, bone tools

There are only a few sites with animal remains in the Tanana region . Among the identifiable remains of fauna include Rangifer (caribou), Wapiti , possibly moose , rabbit, swan and other unidentified birds, two or more types of Canis and rodents. The radiocarbon dates range from 8,900 to 11,900 years. The lack of collagen in dog bones allowed them to be dated to at least 9,500 radiocarbon years.

Most of the bones show marks from stone tools, many of them broken, probably to reach the bone marrow . Some bones were further processed to make tools from them. This includes a piercing - awl , made of a ulna , as well as two similarly shaped bone pieces which are shaped in the manner of a gouge-end. Both have a very smooth polish, which is due to long or intensive use.

The oldest finds belong to the Nenana , then the Denali Complex of the late Beringia. They are followed by artifacts from the postglacial Little Arm phase of the Yukon, then the Northern Archaic Tradition (or Taye Lake phase ) up to the two volcanic eruptions of 100 and 800 AD. Then follows the Late Prehistoric Period (or Aishihik phase ), then the Transitional Contact Period (or Bennett Lake phase ), finally with the 20th century the historical phase. As the area is still being hunted, there is now a recognizable eighth phase.

The oldest artifacts cannot be precisely dated due to the lack of organic remains. They include wedge-like stone tools, scrapers and scrapers, large blades and corresponding chipping cores, as well as the Chindadn blades. They were found just above the regolith in the western section up to the Rockfall section.

Finds from the Denali complex can be found across the entire excavation area. The tools are mostly microblades , small to tiny blades. Leaf-shaped blades or hand axes were also found.

classification

There are two opposing views on the relationship between the artifacts of the Nenana and Denal ps. Powers and Hoffecker were the first to postulate in 1989 that they belonged to the Nenana Complex , and, like several of their colleagues, they believed that there were two different hiking groups that one had to imagine behind the finds, and that they were 1000 to 2000 years apart Region came.

West, Homes and Hefner (1996, 2001 and 2002, respectively) believed in belonging to the Denali, the Eastern Beringian tradition or the Beringian tradition . This is in turn related to the fact that the typical artifacts of the two complexes, the Nenana and Denali complexes, were mixed up at the Swan Site . They tend to believe in various functional uses of the storage space. This was therefore used as a short-term hunting camp, for which no microblade technology was required, but also as a village, so that in this case the microblades were needed.

The Broken Mammoth Site , which has been in use for a long time, still lacks microblade technology. There were traces of reprocessing and manufacture of tools, sharpened weapons, cut marks on bones, skin processing. This would indicate permanent use in the sense of a village-like settlement.

For the Little John Site , these approaches meant taking into account various types of usage, population movements and technological changes, and expressions of cultural identity. In each case, layers were found there, in which there were no microblades , and which contained the Chindadn blades, as well as other characteristic artifacts of the Nenana complex.

From Micro Blades free layers in other places, as in Namu (7500 v. Chr.), Led to the assumption that the Alaskan Nenana complex spread some 10 to 11,000 years southeastward. The caribou remains there as well as leaf-shaped or double-edged hand axes and Chindadn blades in the Yukon on the Little John Site and in KaVn-2 in the extreme southwest of the Yukon between 10500 and 9000 BP supported this thesis. Groups standing behind these artefacts may have moved southeast from Alaska, because their traces are lost earlier in their area of ​​origin than in the Yukon.

The preliminary investigations and the knowledge of other sites that have not yet been investigated form the basis for excavations that the Scottie Creek Culture History Project is planning for the next few years. These should reveal the cultural connections more clearly. In addition, it is hoped to be able to find traces of DNA in the area of ​​the permafrost, where remains of wood were found that were not yet excavated in 2010.

support

The dig was supported by the White River First Nation, the Tanana Chief's Conference in Fairbanks , as well as the Arts and Science Division and Northern Research Institute of Yukon College , the Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge , the US Department of the Interior , and Heritage Resources Board of the Yukon. The 2003 excavations were supported by the Yukon College Field School in Subarctic Archeology and Ethnography ; the 2005 excavation was supported by the Territory's Government Community Development Fund and many White River First Nation youth.

The site has been attracting archaeologists every summer for almost a decade, and colleagues from universities far away are also supporting the project. E. James Dixon of the University of New Mexico offered his help, as did David Yesner of the University of Alaska at Anchorage . Filmmaker Max Fraser directed Little John Country , a feature that was shown at the 2010 Dawson City Film Festival . Chief David Johnny, whom the excavator Norman Easton had asked for permission, offered the archaeologist all the help. He said: "We see him as one of us."

literature

  • Norman Alexander Easton: Archaeological Excavations at the Little John Site (KdVo-6), Southwest Yukon Territory, Canada - 2011
  • Norman Alexander Easton, GR MacKay, PB Young, P. Schnurr, DR Yesner: Nenana in Canada? Emergent Evidence of the Pleistocene Transition in Southeast Beringia from the Little John Site, Yukon Territory, Canada , presented at the Society for American Archeology on March 28, 2008 in Vancouver
  • Norman Alexander Easton: Archaeological Excavations at KdVo-6 and Regional Survey about Beaver Creek, Yukon Territory, Canada. Scottie Creek Culture History Project Research Manuscript 2008-01. Whitehorse: Northern Research Institute 2007.
  • Norman Alexander Easton, V. Hutchinson, DR Yesner, A. Janssens, K. Herrera: An Electronic Database of Archaeological Fauna from the Little John Site (KdVo-6), Yukon Territory, Canada (2003-2007) , Scottie Creek Culture History Project Research Manuscript 2008-06. Whitehorse: Northern Research Institute 2008.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Further literature by him can be found here ( Memento from February 21, 2013 in the Internet Archive ).

Coordinates: 62 ° 34 ′ 0 ″  N , 140 ° 43 ′ 0 ″  W.