Alluvial and lacustrine sediments exposed beneath late Pleistocene glaciolacustrine silt and clay at two sites along the Old Crow River, northern Yukon Territory, are rich in fossils and contain tephra beds. Surprise Creek tephra (SZt) occurs in the lower part of the alluvial sequence at CRH47 and Little Timber tephra (LTt) is present near the base of the exposure at CRH94. Surprise Creek tephra has a glass fission-track age of 0.17 ± 0.07 Ma and Little Timber tephra is 1.37 ± 0.12 Ma. All sediments at CRH47 have a normal remanent magnetic polarity and those near LTt at CRH94 have a reversed polarity — in agreement with the geomagnetic time scale. Small mammal remains from sediments near LTt support an Early Pleistocene age but the chronology is not so clear at CRH47 because of the large error associated with the SZt age determination. Tephrochronological and paleomagnetic considerations point to an MIS 7 age for the interglacial beds just below SZt at CRH47 and at Chester Bluffs in east-central Alaska, but mammalian fossils recovered from sediments close to SZt suggest a late Irvingtonian age, therefore older than MIS 7. Further studies are needed to resolve this problem.

Most recent summaries of eastern Beringian (Alaska and Yukon) archaeology present the Nenana complex, beginning 11,500–12,000 14C yr B.P., as the beginning of the regional archaeological record. Either explicitly or tacitly, these summaries dismiss or ignore a body of older putative evidence of human occupation that may span the late Wisconsin stade and even extend into part of the mid-Wisconsin interstade. This paper summarizes the interpretive problems surrounding the older findings, bringing together data that have accumulated over a period of two decades, in the hope that a coherent presentation will encourage more careful appraisals of the materials. The paper concludes with a family of testable hypotheses concerning the beginnings of human occupation in eastern Beringia. The hypothesis that people were present during the mid-Wisconsin interstade has not yet been falsified.