Pressure Microblade Industries in Pleistocene-Holocene Interior Alaska: Current Data and Discussions

THE MICROBLADE INDUSTRY FROM SWAN POINT CULTURAL ZONE 4b: TECHNOLOGICAL AND CULTURAL IMPLICATIONS FROM THE EARLIEST HUMAN OCCUPATION IN ALASKA

“…The site has major implications for the first colonization of Alaska, Beringia, and the New World. Indeed, as discussed elsewhere (Gómez Coutouly 2011a, 2012; Hirasawa and Holmes 2016; Holmes 2001), Swan Point has strong technological ties with the Siberian Upper Paleolithic Diuktai Culture. Available archaeological evidence shows that late Pleistocene populations in Siberia, the Russian Far East, and Beringia, that is, Diuktai, had long-standing terrestrial-oriented economies and technologies; coastal and maritime adaptation in Beringia is documented much later (Potter et al 2017).…”

Early Holocene blade technology in southern Brazil

“…For the Americas, two blade industries are well known; in Central America, obsidian pressure blade production by Classical societies (Darras, 2012;Hirth, 2012) and bladelet (or microblade) production by pressure from the Pleistocene-Holocene transition in the northwest of north America, in Alaska, British Columbia and the Yukon, the eastern extension of an industry also known in Siberia and the Far East (Ackerman, 1992;Gómez Coutouly, 2012). But in addition to these specialized cases, blade production is also present in other American contexts with different technological modalities.…”

Recent excavations at Owl Ridge, interior Alaska: Site stratigraphy, chronology, and site formation and implications for late Pleistocene archaeology and peopling of eastern Beringia

“…From the archaeological record of Beringia, we see a complicated array of lithic technologies dating to the late Pleistocene (Goebel & Buvit, ). Most of these are unique to Beringia or appear more similar to the Upper Paleolithic technologies found in Northeast Asia than they do to Clovis and contemporary technologies south of the ice sheets (Gómez Coutouly, ; but see Goebel, Powers, & Bigelow, ). Some Beringian site assemblages contain an industry (here we use the terms “industry” and “technological complex” interchangeably) based on microblade and burin technology with the production of microblade‐osseous composite tools and lanceolate bifacial points.…”

“…These assemblages typically date to the Younger Dryas climatic interval (12,800–11,700 cal yr BP, Hua et al, ) and are assigned to the Denali technological complex (Graf & Bigelow, ; Hoffecker, Powers, & Goebel, ; Powers and Hoffecker ; Potter et al, ), following West (). The sites of Swan Point (interior Alaska) and Urez‐22 (Yana‐Indigirka Lowlands, Russia) also contain microblade technology; however, these site occupations date to 14,400–14,200 cal yr BP and are more reminiscent of the Siberian late Upper Paleolithic Diuktai industry than the later Denali complex (Gómez Coutouly, ). For the intervening 1,400 years, following Diuktai and before the appearance of the Denali complex, Beringian site assemblages from the Yana‐Indigirka Lowlands to the upper Yukon drainage completely lack microblade technology as well as the lanceolate points of the Denali complex.…”