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Context and Environment in Taphonomic Analysis: Examples from Alaska's Porcupine River Caves1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

E. James Dixon
E. James Dixon*
Affiliation:
University of Alaska Museum, Fairbanks, Alaska 99701
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Abstract

Field investigations of caves along Alaska's Porcupine River document three major mechanisms which modify bone in patterns similar to alterations produced by man: (1) carnivore fracture; (2) rodent gnawing; and (3) rock fall and rubble scarring. A late Wisconsin faunal assemblage composed of Equus sp., Rangifer tarandus, Ovis dalli, Bison sp., proboscidean, numerous small mammal species, birds, and fish is well documented. This faunal assemblage suggests a mosaic environment of grassland-tundra-forest in the immediate vicinity of these caves and implies that the late Wisconsin environment in north-central Alaska may have been characterized by a number of microenvironments and colder, dryer, steppe conditions. Taphonomic data which have historically been interpreted to support human occupation of eastern Beringia during the Pleistocene are critically examined and the context of these discoveries (not the specimens themselves) provides the test essential to document the antiquity of man in North America prior to 12,000 yr ago.

Type
Research Article
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , September 1984 , pp. 201 - 215
Copyright
University of Washington

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Footnotes

1

Presented at the symposium “Taphonomic Analysis and Interpretation in North American Pleistocene Archaeology” held in Fairbanks, Alaska, April 1982.

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