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Flake Tools in the American Arctic: Some Speculations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Edwin N. Wilmsen
Edwin N. Wilmsen*
Affiliation:
University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona
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Abstract

Two sites, Kogruk (at the summit of Anaktuvuk Pass, Alaska) and Engigstciak (at the head of the Firth River delta, Yukon Territory, Canada), have recently yielded flake-tool assemblages which show striking resemblances to a Eurasiatic flake-blade tradition based on a Levallois-Mousterian stone-chipping technique, and to the Clovis flake-blade tradition of America which appears to be based on a similar chipping technique. It is suggested that these traditions are historically related and that the Arctic sites provide a possible link between the two. The presence of incipient fluting in Siberia and at Engigstciak may prove significant. Dating is discussed in terms of the ecology and geology of the sites and is correlated with the probable periods of availability of the Bering land bridge. An upland-foothills zone is seen to be essentially continuous from central Asia to central North America. It is suggested that this zone provided the only environmentally compatible link between the two continents, and that it was therefore the most probable route of early hunting peoples into the New World.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , January 1964 , pp. 338 - 344
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1964

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