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91 6. Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Cultures of Beringia: The General and the Specific sergei b. slobodin R esearchers began discussing the common origin of the peoples of northeast Asia and Alaska when the latter was discovered and even earlier—J. de Acosta and Ch. Holl in the sixteenth century, E. Brerewood and A. De la Calancha in the seventeenth century, among others (Slobodin 2001b). Steller (1999), who had first met Alaskan aborigines in 1741, noted similarities in their material culture with that of Kamchadals and Koryaks (kayaks, axes, fire-making tools, etc.). Archaeological research of the early twentieth century shed further light on these commonalities, which seemingly had roots in the Paleolithic (Nelson 1935). However, new data on the prehistoric cultures of northeast Asia and Alaska—their character and temporal and geographic ranges—allow researchers to define not only similarities but also differences between them. In Pleistocene northeast Asia and Alaska in the territory of Beringia—the term coined by P. P. Sushkin (1925) for the area from the Verkhoiansk mountains in the west to the upper Yukon River in Canada in the east—several cultural complexes and traditions developed. Some of them are known only in northeast Asia (Pebble Tool tradition) or in Alaska (Mesa); others were spread around the whole of Beringia. Late Pleistocene Beringian sites containing bifaces without microblades (e.g., Ushki Lake layer 7, Nenana, and Mesa) are considered cultures of the Non-Microblade tradition common to northeast Asia and Alaska. Common throughout the region is the Beringian Microblade tradition, represented by Dyuktai, Ushki layer 6, and some other sites in northeast Asia, and by the American Paleoarctic tradition with its Denali, Akmak, and Northwest Coast Microblade complexes in Alaska. In northeast Asia, the upper temporal boundary for this tradition is 9000  C BP (10,200 cal BP); in Alaska it lasted until 7000  C BP (7850 cal BP). In the early Holocene in northeast Asia, the Sumnagin culture with its conical cores spread, whereas in Alaska such cores appeared a bit later in the Late Tundra tradition , which can be called the Post-Beringian tradition. In the Aleutians (Anangula complex), a combination of the Sumnagin and the Beringian tradition is expressed. In this chapter I take a pan-Beringian perspective in reviewing these major “traditions” of the region’s early prehistory and discuss how research into these traditions can contribute to the debate on the peopling of the Americas. Pebble Tool Tradition In the 1960s and 1970s, the existence of a Pebble Tool tradition in Beringia was seriously considered. MüllerBeck (1967) assumed that Pebble Tool industries spread to northeast Asia during the Lower Paleolithic. At the Cape Krusenstern site (figure 6.1, 8), Giddings (1961) considered the Palisades 1 complex—with its axelike , or “chopper,” tools made from beach pebbles (figure 6.2, 5) and “resembling Asian chopper tools”—as the oldest. This complex, albeit with some reservations, was later referred to as Palisades 2 and ascribed to part of the Northern Archaic tradition (Giddings and Anderson 1986). Giddings saw analogies to it in the British Mountain assemblage, at that time considered Paleolithic. Bandi (1972:Figures 5–8) included not only northeast Asia but also Alaska, the Pacific coast, and far western North America in the Pebble Tool tradition zone based on several chopper complexes in Alaska, which, according to him, originated in southeast Asia. According to his 92 Sergei B. Slobodin Pebble Tool tradition existed there in the Pleistocene or early Holocene. The reinvestigated Pasika “Pebble Tool” complex turned out to be much younger, about 5000  С BP (5730 cal BP), containing bifaces and microblades (Carlson 1998; Haley 1996). In western Beringia sites referred to as Pebble Tool tradition are still being found, or, more precisely, identified ; their areas, ages, cultural analogies, and so forth are being specified (Dikov 1979, 1993a; Kir’iak 1995; Vorobei 1999) (figure 6.1, 1–7). In particular, I happened to find a few such complexes and tools on the Okhotsk Coast (Nedorazumeniia Island), along the Kolyma and Omolon rivers (at Ola Plato and the Bol’shoi Elgakhchan River mouth, respectively), and in Chukotka (at Orlovka 2), but so far there have been no reliable data about their assumed antiquity (Slobodin 2006). The number of Pebble Tool sites is about ten, although scheme, in America there are “sites with primitive stone industries of early date, which have been tentatively classified by A. D. Krieger [e.g. 1964—S.S.] as a ‘pre-projectile point stage.’ He...

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