How Alaska Natives Spurred Archaeologists To Research Their Origins
5/13/2015 @ 4:15PM 11,333 views
How Alaska Natives Spurred Archaeologists To Research Their Origins
As humans spread out of Africa and settled the rest of the world tens of thousands of years ago, one geographic location was the last frontier that people conquered: the North American Arctic. The origins of the first people in the Arctic are somewhat mysterious, and one research team, spurred by the native Elders of Barrow, set out to learn whether today’s Arctic inhabitants are descended from those earliest settlers.
Arctic Origins
About 4,500 years ago, a group of people that archaeologists call Paleo-Eskimos were living in stark, frigid Beringia. They were trackers, hunting game animals like caribou and seals, and leaving traces of small settlements all along the north coast of North America. But around 1,400 years ago, archaeologists find new and different artifacts – dogsleds, large whale bone houses, and umiaqs (a type of boat). A new archaeological culture appeared in the Bering Sea region and spread their whale-hunting culture throughout the rest of the Arctic in just a few short generations. It was this new culture, sometimes called Neo-Eskimo or Thule, that was met by European explorers a few centuries later and that continues into the present as Inuit (Canada and Greenland), Eskimo (Siberia), and Iñupiat (Alaska).
Archaeologists and biological anthropologists have been puzzled by the sudden origins and rapid spread of the Neo-Eskimos, whose arrival in the Americans apparently signaled the demise of the Paleo-Eskimos. Was this rapid spread of the new whaling culture accompanied by the rapid spread of a new population? Were the new cultural artifacts better for survival, spreading to other populations already living in the Arctic? Did the Neo-Eskimos out-compete the Paleo-Eskimos, or did the two groups mesh and give rise to modern Arctic inhabitants? Is the Alaskan North Slope the original homeland of both the Paleo-Eskimos and the Neo-Eskimos in Canada and Greenland? A team of researchers used genetics and archaeology to find the answer.
Iñupiat Community Involvement
The roots of this project lay in an eroding burial at Nuvuk. Located at the very tip of Point Barrow near the modern village of Barrow, Alaska, Nuvuk was thought to be a village from the mid-1800s, but a burial with Thule artifacts meant the site was much older. Anne Jensen, an archaeologist with the Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corporation, was called in to recover the burial. A similar burial was found the following year, so Jensen consulted with the local and tribal governments – Barrow Senior Advisory Council, the Native Village of Barrow, and the Iñupiat History, Language and Culture Commission – about how to handle the ancient burials. The Elders in particular felt that the ancient burials at Nuvuk should be found and moved to a safer location. “They were enthusiastic about having as much information recorded about the individuals as possible,” Jensen says, “but did not want the human remains to leave Barrow. They had too much experience with part of their heritage being taken out of town and never returned.”
More:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2015/05/13/how-native-alaskans-spurred-archaeologists-research-origins/
