LIV-00456: Lithic Procurement and Land Use Strategies Within the Vicinity of the Livengood Dome Chert Formation in the Yukon-Tanana Uplands, Alaska

Abstract

LIV-00456 is a pre-contact archaeological site identified during the proposed realignment of the Dalton Highway in central interior Alaska. This site is located on the Livengood Dome Chert Formation among many co-related sites situated in a landscape within the Yukon-Tanana Uplands, where primary lithic raw materials are easily accessed in an elevated feature that would have provided good viewsheds of the Tanana-Yukon lowlands. The diverse data presented in this thesis offer insight into the following questions: What was the function of LIV-00456 through time? And how does the site fit into ancient regional landscape use patterns? Indicating that LIV-00456 was integrated into a comprehensive network of ancient land utilization, which prioritized lithic raw material procurement and hunting activities, this pattern exemplifies logistical short-term occupation with instances of reoccupation extending over several thousand years. The geoarchaeological data, which included environmental magnetic susceptibility (EMS) and sediment acidity (pH)/conductivity, along with the lithic data, support the site's temporal association with the middle to late Holocene, in association with the Northern Archaic and Dené traditions.