Colonization

Abstract

We have already looked at the ethnohistoric record to establish the character of social and political complexity at the end of the archaeological sequence. Here our goal is to set a baseline, or starting point, at the beginning of that sequence. All starting and ending points in historical/evolutionary analysis are arbitrary. Ours are defined by the earliest evidence of occupation on the Kodiak Archipelago and its precedents around the North Pacific Rim (this chapter), and by the Russian conquest of the archipelago in the later half of the 18th century (last chapter). So bracketed, in the next chapter we will ask the central question of this work—by what processes of change did Kodiak hunting and gathering societies evolve into the ethnohistorically documented pattern? This chapter examines the background of, as well as the arguments and evidence for, the initial colonization of the Kodiak Archipelago. This chapter also looks at the character of early to mid-Holocene coastal hunter-gatherer lifeways around the coast of the Gulf of Alaska.KeywordsArchaeological RecordAleutian IslandNorthwest CoastCook InletAlaska PeninsulaThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.