Introduction

Information Sources

Pleistocene Archaeology

Stone Tools and Lithic Sites of the Holocene

Late Precontact Sites

Historic Sites

Inuvialuit Sites

Sites of Unknown Affiliation

Resource Evaluation

Appendix I Cultural Sites

Bibliography

PLEISTOCENE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD CROW FLATS

i) Beringia

The story of humans in the Old Crow Basin must begin with the story of Beringia, that vast ice-free landmass that stretched from the Mackenzie River in the east to the Koyma River in Siberia in the west (Morlan 1996). With the fluctuations in sea level over the last 70 million years, the central part of Beringia has been dry land for millions of years at a time, and for other long periods, including the present, has been flooded by ocean waters. The land connection which formed between Siberia and North American at times of low water is called the Bering Land Bridge. Over this land connection have come many migrations of mammals, birds, plants and other life forms (see Palaeontology, for more information).

We do not know when people first settled in Beringia and began to spread eastward over the Bering Land Bridge. It is thought that people learned how to live in the far north by some 60,000 years ago (Morlan 1996). Morlan (1996) states that the earliest indisputable and widespread evidence of human occupation of western Beringia dates back to about 14,000 years ago. In eastern Beringia, on the North American side of the land connection, such evidence dates back only 12,000 years.

However, despite the lack of this conclusive and widespread evidence, however, there are suggestions of human occupation in the northern Yukon about 24,000 years ago, and hints of the presence of humans in the Old Crow Basin as far back as about 40,000 years ago (Morlan 1996). The Vuntut Gwitchin believe that their ancestors have occupied the Old Crow Basin since time beyond memory or the very beginning of time.

ii) Old Crow River Bluffs: the Earliest Evidence of Humans ?

Along the Old Crow River, as it meanders southward through the Old Crow Basin, are a series of multi-layered bluffs. Sticking out of the bluffs or lying along river bars or banks below the bluffs are found an abundance of mammal bones. Depending on the source, these bones may be of recent origin, or they may be over 50,000 years old. Some of the older bones are stained a dark brown colour, depending on their relative age and extent of fossilization. Some of the bones and antlers found among the rich paleontological deposits of the Old Crow Basin have been interpreted as having been modified by humans. These presumed artifacts would have been made prior to the bones becoming fossilized (the original bone material has become mineralized).

The earliest claimed date for the presence of humans in eastern Beringia was based on fossil bone and tusk fragments found by W. N. Irving and his colleagues at locality 12 on the Old Crow River. Some of these bones were dated at about 350,000 years (Irving 1985). Some fossils were interpreted as artifacts based on fracture patterns and polishing and were considered to be from the mid Pleistocene (Sangamon interglacial) aged at from 130,000 to 80,000 years ago (Irving 1982, Jopling et al. 1981, Julig et al. 1983). It is now believed that the vertebrate fossils recovered from these older deposits do not have the kind of alterations that can be attributed to human reworking (Morlan and Cinq-Mars 1982).

During the period 1973-1976, archaeologist Bonnichsen undertook a laboratory analysis of the fossil bone specimens which had been collected, primarily by Irving and Harington, from the Flats, especially those specimens which appeared to have been modified by humans, and hence archaeologically significant. Bonnichsen’s work (e.g., 1979), provided a technological description of the unique bone technology represented in the Old Crow Flats fossil collections, in which mammoth long bones were used as cores from which bone flakes had been removed, possibly to be used as tools. Cores are the portions of the bone that the smaller flakes are removed from by a precise impact. Morlan (1980) provides a listing of the collections included in Bonnichesen’s analysis, which are primarily those which predate the NYRP and YRP collecting efforts.

The most impressive evidence of the human presence comes from studies showing that the alterations to the bones are not the result of natural agencies and processes, such as trampling or chewing by other mammals or transport and breakage by water or ice (Friesen 1988, Morlan et al. 1990). The precise forms of bone cores and flakes found along the Old Crow River have been replicated in the experimental fracturing and flaking of modern elephant bones.

  Figure 13.1a shows the similarity between a flake made from a mammoth limb bone found on the floor of the Old Crow River valley and a flake made from an African elephant limb bone during the Ginsberg experiment (Morlan and Cinq-Mars 1982).

Recent studies and new dating of mammoth bone fragments from several localities support the hypothesis that humans entered the Old Crow Basin around 40,000 years ago and that the technology of bone flaking appeared at the same time (Morlan et al. 1990). Both the early radiocarbon dating and later modern techniques indicate that the age of the mammoth bone cores is between 40,000 and 25,000 years (Nelson et al. 1986, Morlan et al. 1990).

Redating of specimens as well as reassessment of what is and is not an artifact has continued throughout the 15-20 years of research in the area (Greer 1991). It is now realized that many things previously thought to be artifacts could have been produced by natural agencies (Morlan 1986). These reassessments and debates have helped to keep this area in the research limelight.

Morlan (1986) identified four major research issues that investigators of the Old Crow Flats Pleistocene archaeology must deal with: the identification of artifacts among the fossils; the position and context of the fossils in relation to the natural layers; the dating of the fossils; and the limitations that apply to the interpretation of redeposited fossils (Morlan 1986).

Morlan (1980) suggested that an archaeological site containing Pleistocene bones and artifacts in their original, undisturbed condition may yet be found in Old Crow Flats, though no such site has yet been discovered. He thinks researchers are most likely to discover such a site in the upstream part of the Old Crow Basin, in the drainage network of the Old Crow River and its tributaries, possibly within Vuntut National Park (Morlan 1980).

iii) The Bluefish Caves

The Bluefish Caves are three limestone rock shelters situated on a limestone ridge overlooking the Bluefish River about 65 km southwest of Old Crow and the Porcupine River (Morlan and Cinq-Mars 1982, Cinq-Mars 1984). In the deposits of silt on the cave floor and at the entrance are thousands of bones representing nearly all of the mammals known to have existed in the Yukon during the last Ice Age (mammoth, horse, bison, sheep, wapiti, caribou etc.), plus the bones of fish, one amphibian, and evidence of human occupation (Morlan 1988). That evidence consists of bone tools, bones with butchering marks, patterns of bone breakage, and a variety of flaked stone tools. The tools include burins (a kind of awl), microblades (tiny blades or flakes made from a core of stone using pressure), and a microcore (stone from which the microblades are flaked). No definite cultural features such as hearths have been found and Cinq-Mars (1984) describes the site as a deposit built up by hundreds of cultural and natural events over a long period of time. Only two of the caves show sign of human occupation. Radiocarbon dates range from about 12,000 years ago at Cave I to 25,000 years ago at Cave II (Morlan 1988). Studies of the caves and artifacts suggest that people lived in eastern Beringia during the last glaciation when glacial ice sheets occupied much of the rest of the continent. This period was characterized by harsh glacial conditions, and large windswept glacial lakes lying immediately to the north in what is now the Old Crow Basin (Morlan and Cinq-Mars 1982). Although there may be sites of similar age within Vuntut National Park, none have been identified to date.

iv) The Caribou Flesher Story

Figure 13.1b Click photo to enlarge

The most infamous of the fossil mammal bones which bears clear evidence of human use and manufacture is the flesher made from a caribou leg bone ( Figure 13.1b). In 1966, Peter Lord of Old Crow, assisting palaeontologist Dick Harington, found this artifact at locality 14 N on the Old Crow River, between Schaeffer and Johnson Creeks. This was the first obvious human tool among the thousands of Pleistocene mammal bones that have been collected. Similar to tools used even in historic times to remove flesh from caribou or other hides, this tool became famous as the earliest evidence of humans in the New World because it was originally radiocarbon dated to be 27,000 years old. The flesher tool and other fossil specimens, including several mammoth long bone fragments believed to have been modified by humans, were submitted for radiocarbon dating (Irving and Harington 1973). The results indicated that the flesher and other presumed artifacts made from the bones of mammals dated to about 30,000 to12,000 years ago (the height of the late Wisconsinan glaciation).

The caribou bone flesher was featured in many articles, exhibits, and research proposals as an example of the potential for discovering further evidence of the earliest human occupation of the continent. However, the dates assigned to the flesher and other artifacts were controversial and not universally accepted. In the mid-1980s this artifact and several other fossil bones and bone artifacts from the Old Crow Flats were re-submitted for dating using modern dating techniques. The new analysis showed that the flesher was much younger, about 1,000 years old (Nelson et al. 1986, Morlan et al. 1990). The original age obtained for the flesher was in error by about 26,000 years, probably because of contamination of the bone by carbonates in the groundwater (Nelson et al. 1986). In the end, the major contribution of this artifact was the impetus it generated for further research on the presence of humans in this area. The early date for the flesher helped to launch intensive multi-disciplinary research in the Old Crow Basin that continued through the 1980s (Nelson et al. 1986) and to the present.