V. Far North Traditions

The Far North included the Arctic and Subarctic culture areas of North America that begins in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, through the rest of Alaska,  and across the Canadian shield to and including Greenland. The Arctic is a treeless tundra in which the Yupik, Inuit (Eskimo), and Aleut peoples adapted with various hunting and gathering (foraging) lifestyles that included resources equally from the land (especially caribou) and the sea (especially fish and sea mammal). During the winter many Inuit peoples had to trek out across the frozen sea ice to find sea mammals and fish living under the ice in Arctic waters. This seasonal time is the where image of dog sleds, fur parkas and igloos comes from. These people are not American Indians, but they are Native Americans with definitive origins (Paleo-Siberian language) derived from Siberia from 7,000 to 2,500 years ago. However, if origin theories have any validity many American Indian groups must have come through these same areas that were later occupied by the Yupik, Inuit and Aleut peoples. We also know that the Athabascan (Dene) and Algonkian Indians settled in the Subarctic that stretches from Yukon Alaska across Canada. These people were basically forest hunters and fisherman. The Subarctic was a vast boreal forest with huge glacially formed lakes and bays including Hudson Bay itself. Anywhere from 30,000 years ago to 3,000 years ago quite a variety of people must have made their way into the continent through the Arctic and Subarctic.The sparseness of sites is baffling, but with repeated glacial advances many sites were probably destroyed by glaciers and alternative flooding.

These are the dominant traditions that developed in the Arctic and Subarctic:

The Paleo-Arctic Tradition and Early Coastal Traditions are lithic traditions of early cultures that may represent American Indian peoples that came through the Aleutians and Alaska. The Aleutian Tradition and Arctic Small Tool Tradition may represent the first predecessors of the Aleut, Yupik, and Inuit peoples.

The Aleutian Tradition is a long term development of technologies (stone, bone, wood and cordage) directed toward the hunting of sea mammals, sea birds and shellfish/fish on the Aleutian Islands and Southern Alaska. The people lived in stone/sod and wooden semi-subterranean houses in a cold rainy environment that had some of the most surprisingly rich variety of sea life on earth. Hunters developed an atlatl and harpoon system for killing sea mammals in two man skin boats called baidarkas. Both men and women fished or netted a variety of deep sea and coastal animals, such as sea urchin, abalone, cormorant, etc. This tradition continued until major disruption from Russian and other European whalers and sea otter hunters who came in the late 1700's and early 1800's. The Anangula site on Umnak Island represents over 6000 years of occupation of the Aleutians from Early Coastal through Aleutian Traditions.

Arctic Small Tool Tradition was an interior and coastal adaptation that primarily involved hunting of caribou/reindeer, birds, sea mammal (coastal) and fishing (coastal-riverine) along bays and the interior of Alaska. Some scholars feel that this culture may have been responsible for the advent of the bow and arrow as evidenced by bone and small unifacial stone tips around 2000 BC. These people, as the name suggests produced a number of small blades, burins, projectile points and knife-like side scrappers.

At about 1000 BC. (3,000 BP) new people and/or technologies spread across the Arctic from Alaska to Greenland and are represented in the archaeological record by the Norton, Dorset and Thule Traditions.  Technological innovations such as pottery, oil lamps, sleds and toggle harpoons allowed for these Inuit peoples to specialize their adaptations to maritime, riverine, and coastal ecological niches.  Boats (kayak and umiak), housing (stone, sod, skin and snow) and dog sleds reflected these adaptive variations. There was an increase of arts with bone, stone and ivory carvings that reveal strong connections to shamanic practices, amulets and hunting magic. The most dramatic adaptation is that of the polar peoples above Hudson's Bay who hunted caribou in the summer and went out on the sea ice to hunt seals through breathing holes in the winter. Only the ability to build a snow house (igloo), dog sleds, and the toggle harpoon combined with hunting knowledge and skill were the keys to and survive. The sites at Point Hope (Ipiutak) and Arctic Bay (Thule) represent these northern adaptations.

The Archaic Subarctic Tradition represents Athabascan and Algonkian Indians hunting and gathering in the boreal Subarctic forests. These were American Indian people that were  the last group of what are referred to as American Indians that came into the Far North but went into the boreal forest of the Subartic around 10,000 BP. Hunting caribou in the north and moose in the south with some birds and lake fish were the staples for the people. They too developed stone tools for hunting and processing game, eventually shifting from atlatl to bow and arrow. Specific adaptations for the deep snows and many lakes were reflected in inventions like snow shoes, toboggans and bark canoes.  Onion Portage, Alaska is a site that reveals deep stratigraphy from 10,000 BP -300 BP with the increasingly smaller lithics that were developed to accommodate the introduction of the bow and arrow. In Newfoundland and the St. Lawrence there were maritime adaptations of these cultures at sites like Port aux Choix, Newfoundland.

Copyright © S. J. Crouthamel 2013