St. Lawrence Island is located west of mainland Alaska in the Bering Sea, just south of the Bering Strait. The village of Gambell, located on the northwest cape of the island, is 50 nautical miles from the Chukchi Peninsula in the Russian Far East. The island is part of Alaska, but closer to Russia than to the Alaskan mainland. St. Lawrence Island is thought to be one of the last exposed portions of the land bridge that once joined Asia with North America during the Pleistocene period. It is the sixth largest island in the United States and the 113th largest island in the world. It is considered part of the Bering Sea Volcanic Province. The Saint Lawrence Island shrew is a species of shrew endemic to St. Lawrence Island.
Cape Krusenstern National Monument and the colocated Cape Krusenstern Archeological District is a U.S. National Monument and a National Historic Landmark centered on Cape Krusenstern in northwestern Alaska. The national monument was one of fifteen new National Park Service units designated by the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) of 1980. It was initially declared a national monument under the authority of the Antiquities Act by President Jimmy Carter on December 1, 1978.
The Arctic Small Tool tradition (ASTt) was a broad cultural entity that developed along the Alaska Peninsula, around Bristol Bay, and on the eastern shores of the Bering Strait around 2500 BC. ASTt groups were the first human occupants of Arctic Canada and Greenland. This was a terrestrial entity that had a highly distinctive toolkit based on microblade technology. Typically tool types include scrapers, burins and side and end blades used in composite arrows or spears made of other materials, such as bone or antler. Many researchers also assume that it was Arctic Small Tool populations who first introduced the bow and arrow to the Arctic, that eventually became the Eskimo archery material culture. ASTt camps are often found along coasts and streams, to take advantage of seal or salmon populations. While some of the groups were fairly nomadic, more permanent, sod-roofed homes have also been identified from Arctic Small Tool tradition sites.
The Amalik Bay Archeological District is a geographic area with a significant number of archaeological sites in Alaska. It is located on the Pacific coast of Katmai National Park and Preserve, in the mainland portion of Kodiak Island Borough, Alaska.
The Birnirk site is an archaeological site near Utqiagvik, Alaska. It includes sixteen prehistoric mounds which have yielded evidence of very early Birnirk and Thule culture. It is the type site of the Birnirk culture, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1962 for its archaeological importance in understanding prehistoric Arctic cultures.
The Brooks River Archaeological District encompasses a large complex of archaeological sites along the banks of the Brooks River in Katmai National Park and Preserve in the U.S. state of Alaska. It includes at least twenty separate settlement sites with documented occupation dates from 2500 BCE to recent (post-contact) history. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1993. The site is partly occupied by the Brooks Camp, one of the major visitor areas of the park.
The Chaluka Site is a prehistoric archaeological site and National Historic Landmark in Nikolski, Alaska, on Umnak Island in the Aleutian Islands of southwestern Alaska. The site documents more than 4,000 years of more-or-less continuous occupation of the area now occupied by the modern village of Nikolski. The site includes a large midden, yielding much information about the origins of the Aleut people.
The Dry Creek Archeological Site is an archaeological site not far outside Denali National Park and Preserve. It is a multi-component site, whose stratified remains have yielded evidence of human occupation as far back as 11,000 years ago. The site is located on the northern flanks of the Alaska Range, near Healy, Alaska, in the Nenana River watershed. There are four major components to the site, layered in an outwash terrace overlooking Dry Creek, with layers of loess separating them.
The Gallagher Flint Station Archeological Site is an archaeological site and National Historic Landmark in northern Alaska. Discovered in 1970 during the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, it yielded a radiocarbon date of 10,540 B.P., making it the oldest site of human activity then known in the state.
The Ipiutak site is a large archaeological site at Point Hope in northwest Alaska, United States. It is one of the most important discoveries in this area, competing only with Ekven, Russia.
The Onion Portage Archeological District encompasses a major archaeological site in Kobuk Valley National Park in northwestern Alaska. The site is a deeply stratified site, at which archaeologists have located nine complexes ranging dating from approximately 6500BC to AD1700. The site has been of critical benefit for the study of Arctic cultures, and is used to determine the cultural chronology of the region.
The Palugvik Site, also known as Palugvik Archeological District, is an archaeological site on Hawkins Island in Prince William Sound, near Cordova, Alaska, within Chugach National Forest. The site, first excavated in 1930, was the first to provide a view of prehistoric human habitation in Prince William Sound, the ancestral home of the Chugach people, and is one of the two primary sites for identifying the sequence of occupation in the area. The site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1962, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966.
The Gambell Sites are five archeological sites which established a chronology of over 2000 years of human habitation on St. Lawrence Island near Gambell, Alaska.
The Wales Site, whose principal component is the Kurigitavik mound, is a well-documented archeological site on the Cape Prince of Wales, near Wales, Alaska. This site has artifacts from the Birnirk culture as well as the first discovery in Alaska of the later Thule culture. The site was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1962 for its archaeological significance.
This is a list of the National Register of Historic Places listings in Nome Census Area, Alaska.
This is a list of the National Register of Historic Places listings in Northwest Arctic Borough, Alaska.
Norton Bay is a waterway classified bay located on the northeastern part of the Norton Sound, on the Seward Peninsula in the Nome Census Area of the Bering Sea of the U.S. state of Alaska. The mouths of several rivers debouch at Norton Bay, including the Kwik, Kwiniuk, and Tubutulik rivers.
James Louis Giddings was an American archaeologist who made significant contributions to Arctic archaeology. During three decades of his fieldwork in Northwest Alaska he established evidence of human occupation ranging as far back as 4,000 B.C.E.
St. Michael Redoubt was a fortified trading and supply post established by the Russian-American Company in 1833, at the location of what is now the city of St. Michael, Alaska. It is located on the southern shore of Norton Sound at a convenient location near the mouth of the Yukon River. The fort, established by order of Ferdinand Wrangel, was used in following decades as a logistics point for exploration of southwestern Alaska and the Alaskan interior via the Yukon and other rivers.
The Denbigh Flint complex was a Paleo-Inuit material culture that was active in Alaska and northwestern Canada from 4,000 to 3300 years ago. They were the first members of the wide material assemblage known as the Arctic Small Tool tradition. Sites attributed to the Denbigh Flint complex mostly inhabited northern Alaska from Cape Krusenstern to the western Yukon, but sites are also found further to the south from the Aleutian islands into mainland Alaska. They were mobile hunter-gatherers who relied on caribou herds for sustenance. The Denbigh Flint complex likely were descendants from the Syalakh and Bel’kachi cultures of Siberia. They engaged in wide-scale trade, moving pieces of obsidian over 500km. The economy of the Denbigh Flint complex was based around both maritime and terrestrial resources. They made seasonal visits to the coast to hunt seals, but their primary food was caribou, which they hunted year-round. Denbigh peoples also fished, picked berries, and hunted birds in the fall.
