Walrusing, whaling and the origins of the Old Bering Sea culture

ABSTRACT

For a century, archaeologists have puzzled over the enigma of successful whaling unfolding with no predecessors prior to the last two millennia. The emergence of social complexity is linked with the appearance of the Old Bering Sea (OBS) aesthetic engraved on walrus ivory implements found in sites with large cemeteries and thick middens. Significantly, many OBS sites co-occur with major haulout locations for Pacific walrus, whose procurement engendered relationships that, along with seafaring or hunting technology, were the pivotal drivers that fostered whaling. Our revision of extant ¹⁴C assays to correct for marine carbon produces a younger ‘Low’ chronology placing the OBS florescence between AD 650–1250, with its earliest phase Okvik and allied Ipiutak communities from AD 300 to 600. The lithic technology of OBS is distinctive in its notched bifaces with affinities to 3000-year-old Chukchi Archaic assemblages. Later influences on OBS development include Ipiutak lithic technology and suggest migration, and either adversarial, or trading relationships with Alaska. The acquisition of rare commodities (driftwood, iron and obsidian) contributed to differential success and resulted in inequality recorded in burials.

KEYWORDS:

• Alaska prehistory
• Chukotka prehistory
• social complexity
• warfare
• radiocarbon calibration
• lithic technology
• obsidian

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. As an aside, megaliths with spiral motifs employed within Korean Bronze Age cultures, probably date ca. 5000 BC (Jeon 2013, 209) offer yet another tantalizing, remote pathway over the longue durée for whaling across northeast Asia; at least the subsistence base bears more resemblance to Bering Strait. In either the Chinese or Korean case, even if substantiated further, a deep time origin seems of little immediate explanatory power.

2. Obtained on long-lived spruce (Picea spp.) wood from an Okvik house at the Hillside site, this assay was run by solid carbon methods (Ralph and Ackerman 1961). The calendar age was presented without calibration, as was standard at the time, with the age for Okvik set in quick-drying cement by Giddings (1960, 123). Only a few years later, a gas-process assay from the same Okvik context yielded an age of 1461 ± 65 ¹⁴C yr BP (P-325) AD 428–666 (Ralph and Ackerman 1961, 7). Dumond (1998, 274) offers an extended discussion of the alternative dating possibilities.

3. The transformational winged object with a head emerging is from Burial 285B, which contains two ¹⁴C ages (Gusev, Zogoroulko, and Porotov 1999, Table 1), calibrated Table 3, the youngest, likely most reliable is 1800 ± 40 BP (GIN-7144a), AD 855–1260.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Owen K. Mason

Owen K. Mason (Ph.D., Quaternary Science, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, 1990) is Research Affiliate at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His major areas of interest include the geoarchaeology, and stratigraphy of Alaskan beach ridges and dunes, as well as the study of the aesthetics and designs of the Ipiutak, Old Bering Sea and Birnirk cultures. He has published widely, edited several books, including the Oxford Handbook of Arctic Prehistory, and has authored over 40 papers in books and journals from Quaternary Research, American Antiquity to the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology on all aspects of Alaska prehistory and on coastal hazards. Dr. Mason has co-authored papers on the sourcing of volcanic rocks in the Aleutians and on metal artefacts recovered in Alaska. He has served on the board of directors for the Alaska Anthropological Association, editor of the Alaska Journal of Anthropology and is a fellow of the American Association Advancement of Science. Dr. Mason is co-Principal Investigator in a NSF-funded project on Birnirk/Thule Origins at Cape Espenberg, Alaska.

Jeffrey T. Rasic

Jeffrey T. Rasic (Ph.D., Washington State University, 2008) is an archaeologist and currently holds a position as ProgramManager for Natural and Cultural Resource Management for the US National Park Service based in Fairbanks, Alaska. Hisresearch interests and publications have focused on lithic technology, the early settlement of the arctic, and the geochemical sourcing of stone raw materials in Siberia and Alaska, especially obsidian.