The Prehistory of the Utukok River Region Arctic Alaska: Early Fluted Point Tradition with Old World Relationships

Abstract

During the summers of 1965 and 1966, archaeological reconnaissance and excavation was conducted by the author and two field assistants on the Upper and Middle Utukok River, northwestern Alaska. Lithic collections made during the expeditions contain fluted points of Clovis type in direct association with several unique implements, strikingly similar in both form and technique to examples from the European Upper Palaeolithic. The region of investigation, approximately 100 river miles in length, includes that portion of the Utukok River valley which lies within the Arctic Foothills province of the Arctic Slope of north Alaska (Fig. 1). This area, because of its proximity to Bering Strait, because it remained unglaciated throughout Wisconsin times, and because it has apparently contained large herds of herbivorous big game animals for tens of thousands of years, is a critical region in which to search for the cultural remains of early Palaeo-Indian immigrants to the New World. This area lies far beyond the treeline, and the country is made up of broad, tundra-covered valleys separated by synclinal and anticlinal sandstone ridges stretching east to west, connecting the Utukok drainage with other river basins. The archaeological sites were invariably found on the tops and flanks of these ridges, where the actions of frost, solifluction, and washing on the already thin veneer of topsoil has had the effect of eliminating any stratigraphy which may have been present. The sites ranged from small concentrations of chippings to large areas several thousand square yards in extent, littered with artifacts and flaking debris. No organic remains or features were observed on the sites, and artifacts were discovered both on the surface and scattered randomly throughout the thin topsoil layer by washing and frost action. The 1965-66 archaeological project, supported by the Arctic Institute of North America, the Explorers Club, and the National Science Foundation (U.S.A.), consisted of a reinvestigation of some of the lithic sites reported by Thompson in 1948, together with the discovery and testing of other PalaeoIndian sites in the region. A total of 23 lithic sites were examined, four being localities discovered by Thompson (including one-Site 13-on which a fluted point was found), while the other 19 represent new finds. Approximately 600 finished artifacts and 10,000 stone flakes, nearly half of them retouched or used, were recovered in all. All of the implements, with the single exception of a barbed antler point of Eskimo type, are of a dense, glassy Jurassic chalcedony, black, blue-gray, or reddish in color. Despite the fact that chalcedony occurs in large outcrops in the DeLong Mountains a short distance to the south, nearly all the Utukok artifacts appear to have originated as river cobbles. While chalcedony pebbles are fairly common in the Utukok River gravels, examples large enough to be employed for toolmaking are by no means abundant, suggesting that the peoples traversing the area at the time represented by much of the cultural material were unaware of the existence of good flint quarries nearby. The high degree of utilization of unretouched flakes as cutting, scraping, or chopping tools reflects an economical use of this limited raw material, and further implies that the Utukok sites served not only as game lookout and chipping stations, but represent living sites or campsites where game was butchered, eaten, and fashioned into artifacts by whole bands of hunting people. Although stratigraphy is lacking in the Utukok sites, typological comparisons of the artifacts with those from other North American and Eurasian assemblages reveal at least six distinctive cultural components. These complexes, which reflect a temporal span extending from the present to possibly 12,000 B.C. or earlier, include: (1) late prehistoric Utorquarmiut Eskimo materials; (2) tools of the Arctic Small Tool tradition, very similar to artifacts from the Iyatayet site at Cape Denbigh (Giddings 1951); (3) a notched point component with implements possibly