Little Panguingue Creek: A c. 9600-Year-Old Prehistoric Knapping Workshop in the Nenana Valley, Central Alaska^*

* Review and acceptance of this manuscript was managed by Brian Wygal, Department of Anthropology, Adelphi University.

ABSTRACT

The Nenana Valley near Healy, Alaska, has been the site of many decades of prehistoric archaeological research focused on the late Pleistocene and early Holocene records. New research at the Little Panguingue Creek (LPC) site (HEA-038) provides us with important information about Pleistocene–Holocene human activities in the Nenana Valley foothills. This multi-component site is located on a Healy-aged glacial-outwash terrace, overlooking LPC. A new multi-year excavation program, begun in 2015, revealed a c. 9600 cal yr BP knapping workshop (hammerstones, cores, preforms, cortical spalls, tools, debitage, etc.) with a major microblade component dating from the final phase of the Denali complex, along with an older component dating to c. 11,150 cal yr BP. On-going research at the site will further our understanding of human technological, subsistence, and settlement organization in the Nenana Valley (and beyond) during the Pleistocene/Holocene transition. Here we present preliminary results of work accomplished so far.

KEYWORDS:

• Alaska
• Nenana Valley
• Denali complex
• microblade technology
• Pleistocene–Holocene transition

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Department of Archaeology of the University of Alaska Museum of the North (UAMN) for providing access to the early collections of Little Panguingue Creek, and for assistance with the processing of the state permit for excavations. Finally, we would like to thank the 2015 and 2016 American and French volunteer students who have participated in the excavation of the site.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Yan Axel Gómez Coutouly is a permanent researcher at the CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research). His research focuses on lithic technology among late Pleistocene and early Holocene societies in Beringia, during the initial stages of the peopling process of the Americas. Since 2013, he has been directing the French archaeological mission in Alaska (mafAK) funded by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Kelly E. Graf is an associate professor in the Center for the Study of the First Americans, Department of Anthropology, Texas A&M University. Her research focuses on the study of geoarcheology, lithic technology, and environmental archaeology to better understand the peopling of Siberia, Beringia, and the Americas.

Angela K. Gore is a PhD candidate at the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Texas A&M University. Her research is focused on the interaction of human culture and the environment in the North American sub-Arctic, specifically lithic toolstone technologies from the Late Pleistocene and Holocene. She is especially interested in toolstone selection, procurement, and sourcing as well as landscape use.

Ted Goebel is a professor of anthropology at Texas A&M University. He has been involved in many field archaeological projects in central Alaska, including excavations at the nearby Panguingue Creek, Walker Road, and Dry Creek sites.

ORCID

Yan Axel Gómez Coutouly http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8246-1550

Notes

* Review and acceptance of this manuscript was managed by Brian Wygal, Department of Anthropology, Adelphi University.

Additional information

Funding

Fieldwork at the Little Panguingue Creek site has been financially supported by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MEAE), the Center for the Study of the First Americans (CSFA) of Texas A&M University, Elfrieda Frank Foundation, and the UMR 7055 Prehistory and Technology Laboratory of Nanterre (France).