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345 20. Technology, Typology, and Subsistence A Partly Contrarian Look at the Peopling of Beringia don e. dumond A cceptable evidence for the peopling of Beringia before 12,000  C BP (14,000 cal BP) involves microblades and wedge-shaped microcores that hark to northeastern Asia. But around five hundred years after that date, with the opening of the ice-free corridor and changes in ecological regime, eastern Beringian artifacts and subsistence patterns begin to include some that mirror interior North America. The Nenana complex may be one result of this, implying not only a contribution from heartland North America but also a still more ancient human presence there. Paleoindian affinities become especially evident in interior Alaska after 10,000  C BP (11,400 cal BP), while some of the remnant microblade makers of Asia-derived culture turn coastward and spread south along the Pacific littoral, their culture then appearing mixed with that of more southerly North Americans. In this chapter I examine aspects of the early archaeology of Beringia—eastern Beringia in particular—emphasizing elements that within the past very few years have come to seem especially characteristic of the overall patterning of sites and complexes. I give some attention to apparent subsistence adaptations, which of course also relate to changes in environmental conditions. I do not argue for the truth of the major interpretations but rather for a recognition that the pattern adduced should be on the table for consideration. I refer to the approach as “partly contrarian,” recognizing that the notions are not new, but also that they have not been at the forefront of recent interpretive logic. Background Any consideration of the subject must, of course, begin with recognition that the predominant genetic background of American natives lies somewhere in Asia. There is much support for this, although its understanding has not been with us quite so long as some comments in professional works make it appear. Obviously, when Columbus arrived in the West Indies in 1492, the physical appearance of the local people was not of a sort to contradict his impression that he had reached Asian shores. Several of us have attributed a particularly insightful comment of a century later to Fr. José de Acosta, a Jesuit who spent the years 1571–1587 in the New World and whose Historia natural y moral de Las Indias was published in Spain in 1590 and translated into English in 1604 (to which is owed frequent citations as “Joseph de Acosta”). According to some recent commentators (myself included), he wrote that the native peoples must have originally come from Asia into the Americas through the upper left-hand corner. But given the shaky geographic knowledge of the sixteenth century, if Fray Acosta was that specific he would have been ahead of his time indeed. What he really said was that both the eastern and western American coasts must run north for an immense distance, that somewhere the various parts of the earth must join or at least come very close to one another, and that if all that supposition be true the first dwellers in “The Indies” must have come not by sea but by land. But he specified neither east nor west (Acosta 2002:63). Nevertheless, at about the same time certain other Europeans were commenting more specifically on the Asian aspect of at least some of the Americans. For example , local Inuit (admittedly more Asian in appearance than some other natives) were described by Christopher Hall in his account of Martin Frobisher’s first voyage to the northeastern bay (1576) that now bears his name: “They bee like to Tartars, with long blacke haire, broad faces, and flatte noses, and tawnie in colour” (Hall in Stefansson 1938:1.153). 346 Don E. Dumond southern tributary of the Tanana River system—and with reference to other collections, including that from the Campus site. Key artifacts were microblades derived from wedge-shaped microcores and certain diagnostic burins. At almost the same time, Anderson (1968, 1970) placed the two earliest assemblages from the Onion Portage site on the Kobuk River of northwest Alaska in his American Paleo-Arctic tradition, which includes comparable microblades and cores. Although it was several years before carbon samples in reasonably clear associations would show that at least some of those microblade industries were aged on the order of 10,000 radiocarbon years (or 11,400 cal BP) (e.g., West 1975), the same earliest period of such finds included the announcement of a...

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