Lithic Technology at Linda's Point, Healy Lake, Alaska

Abstract

<p class="Pa5" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; color: #221e1f;">Interior Alaska’s Healy Lake archaeological locality contains a cultural sequence spanning 13 500 years, beginning with some of the oldest known human occupations in Alaska. From 2011 to 2014, we conducted archaeological excavations at the Linda’s Point site. Detailed recording has clearly separated the lowest cultural component at the site and begun to clarify the contentious culture history of the Healy Lake area. The lower component, associated with a thick paleosol, contains multiple hearths, debitage, and small triangular points similar to those seen at the Healy Lake Village site. The upper silt deposits contain a variety of lithic tool types within a dense scatter of debitage and bone fragments spanning a wide time range. Linda’s Point appears to have been used as a habitation site throughout its history, changing from recurring short-term occupations in the terminal Pleistocene to more intensive site habitation and greater reliance on local lithic resources during the Holocene.</span></p>