Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: A Settlement System Model for the Central Alaska Peninsula Pacific Coast

University Of Arkansas, Fayetteville AR

Investigators

Abstract

ABSTRACT FOR OPP-0103687 A Settlement System Model for the Central Alaska Peninsula Pacific Coast Professor Allen P. McCartney, Principal Investigator Patricia L. McClenahan, Co-Investigator Department of Environmental Dynamics University of Arkansas, Fayetteville The past 1,000 years witnessed the transition of North Pacific hunter-gatherers from small, egalitarian family-based groups to complex hunter-gatherers. The upper and lower Pacific coast of the Alaska Peninsula, Kodiak, and the Aleutian Islands were intensely inhabited prehistorically, and after 1,000 B.P. the residents were taking part in a greater southwest Alaska cultural interaction sphere. However, there is little information about the prehistoric and historic inhabitants of the central Alaska Peninsula Pacific coast. The project will retrieve archaeological and environmental data from the Portage Bay watershed. The goal is to better define the central Alaska Peninsula with regard to subsistence and settlement strategies compared to those of the greater Alaska Peninsula through time. The project will utilize ethnohistoric and ethnographic data now being gathered about the subsistence-settlement systems of the historic inhabitants of Portage Bay. The project will contribute to recording and preserving the prehistoric and historic traditions and cultural heritage of the Alutiiq people and others