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Why, when, and how people developed highly specialized marine economies remains the focus of considerable anthropological research. Study of maritime adaptations at high latitudes has potential to contribute to this debate because low biodiversity and increased resource seasonality at high latitudes made reliance on marine resources particularly risky. New research at the Cape Krusenstern site complex, located in northwest Alaska, offers a rare opportunity to study the evolution of maritime adaptations across the environmentally dynamic mid-to-late Holocene Arctic. Large-scale and systematic survey of this important site complex was undertaken to address questions about the timing and character of early Arctic coastal lifeways. Our research yielded direct dates of 4200 years ago for the oldest occupation of the site complex and identified several new sites dating to between 4200 and 2000 years ago. Results support the existing settlement model, pointing to increased sedentism and local population only after 2000 years ago. New data, however, indicate local population was much higher than previously established and that coastal occupation was sustained over long periods of time despite considerable mid-to-late Holocene paleoenvironmental variability. Together, these findings raise new questions about the evolution of maritime adaptations at high latitudes.

Archaeologists hypothesize that mid-late Holocene environmental variability played a role in several significant western Arctic cultural developments including population fluctuations, the evolution of Arctic maritime adaptations, and Arctic-wide migrations. Further evaluation of these hypotheses requires higher resolution archaeological and paleoecological datasets than are currently available. In response, we undertook an interdisciplinary study at Cape Krusenstern, a large coastal site complex in northwest Alaska, which was occupied over the last ca. 5000-6000 years. Our goals were to refine local cultural and paleoenvironmental chronologies and to explore the question of how local environmental change may have influenced local settlement history. The resulting revised chronology and depositional units confirm and refine prior interpretation of the local archaeological settlement history. New geomorphological data on coastal environmental change and post-depositional modification of the Cape Krusenstern beach ridge system also provide information about patterns of archaeological site preservation, indicating periods of potentially poorer site preservation around 3990 cal BP; this informs interpretation of forager settlement data. Furthermore, our findings suggest that climate-driven changes in the coastal environment at Cape Krusenstern may not be as determinative in terms of landscape evolution as previously thought. Future work should focus on further investigating the relationship between beach ridge development and regional climatic patterns on a regional scale, as this has implications for use of beach ridges as a mid-late Holocene climate proxy. Continued efforts to build paleoenvironmental reconstructions of higher temporal and spatial resolution for the region will help address remaining questions about the relationship between local coastal environmental changes and regional patterns, and the impacts of these environmental shifts on local residents.

We explore marine reservoir effects (MREs) in seal bones from the northern Bering and Chukchi Seas regions. Ringed and bearded seals have served as dietary staples in human populations along the coasts of Arctic northeast Asia and North America for several millennia. Radiocarbon (14C) dates on seal bones and terrestrial materials (caribou, plants seeds, wood, and wood charcoal) were compared from archaeological sites in the Bering Strait region of northwestern Alaska to assess MREs in these sea mammals over time. We also compared these results to 14C dates on modern seal specimens collected in AD 1932 and 1946 from the Bering Sea region. Our paired archaeological samples were recovered from late Holocene archaeological features, including floors from dwellings and cache pits, that date between 1600 and 130 cal BP. 14C dates on seal bones from the northern Bering and Chukchi Seas show differences [R(t)] of 800 ± 140 years from to their terrestrial counterparts, and deviations of 404 ± 112 years (ΔR) from the marine calibration curve.