The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age and the Bronze Age. The concept has been mostly applied to Iron Age Europe and the Ancient Near East, but also, by analogy, to other parts of the Old World. It is also considered the third phase, of three, in the Metal Ages.
The Bering Strait is a strait between the Pacific and Arctic oceans, separating the Chukchi Peninsula of the Russian Far East from the Seward Peninsula of Alaska. The present Russia-United States maritime boundary is at 168° 58' 37" W longitude, slightly south of the Arctic Circle at about 65° 40' N latitude. The Strait is named after Vitus Bering, a Danish explorer in the service of the Russian Empire.
In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, the era covers the history of Indigenous cultures until significant influence by Europeans. This may have occurred decades or even centuries after Columbus for certain cultures.
The Eskaleut, Eskimo–Aleut or Inuit–Yupik–Unangan languages are a language family native to the northern portions of the North American continent and a small part of northeastern Asia. Languages in the family are indigenous to parts of what are now the United States (Alaska); Canada including Nunavut, Northwest Territories, northern Quebec (Nunavik), and northern Labrador (Nunatsiavut); Greenland; and the Russian Far East. The language family is also known as Eskaleutian, Eskaleutic or Inuit–Yupik–Unangan.
Paleosiberianlanguages or Paleoasian (Paleo-Asiatic) are several linguistic isolates and small families of languages spoken in parts of northeastern Siberia and the Russian Far East. They are not known to have any genetic relationship to each other; their only common link is that they are held to have antedated the more dominant languages, particularly Tungusic and latterly Turkic languages, that have largely displaced them. Even more recently, Turkic and especially Tungusic have been displaced in their turn by Russian.
The Thule or proto-Inuit were the ancestors of all modern Inuit. They developed in coastal Alaska by the year 1000 and expanded eastward across northern Canada, reaching Greenland by the 13th century. In the process, they replaced people of the earlier Dorset culture that had previously inhabited the region. The appellation "Thule" originates from the location of Thule in northwest Greenland, facing Canada, where the archaeological remains of the people were first found at Comer's Midden. The links between the Thule and the Inuit are biological, cultural, and linguistic.
The Paleo-Eskimo were the peoples who inhabited the Arctic region from Chukotka in present-day Russia across North America to Greenland prior to the arrival of the modern Inuit (Eskimo) and related cultures. The first known Paleo-Eskimo cultures developed by 2500 BCE, but were gradually displaced in most of the region, with the last one, the Dorset culture, disappearing around 1500 CE.
Trade beads are beads that were used as a medium of barter within and amongst communities. They are considered to be one of the earliest forms of trade between members of the human race. It has also been surmised that bead trading was one of the reasons why humans developed language.
The Seward Peninsula is a large peninsula on the western coast of the U.S. state of Alaska whose westernmost point is Cape Prince of Wales. The peninsula projects about 200 mi (320 km) into the Bering Sea between Norton Sound, the Bering Strait, the Chukchi Sea, and Kotzebue Sound, just below the Arctic Circle. The entire peninsula is about 210 mi (330 km) long and 90–140 mi (145–225 km) wide. Like Seward, Alaska, it was named after William H. Seward, the United States Secretary of State who fought for the U.S. purchase of Alaska.
A Bering Strait crossing is a hypothetical bridge or tunnel that would span the relatively narrow and shallow Bering Strait between the Chukotka Peninsula in Russia and the Seward Peninsula in the U.S. state of Alaska. The crossing would provide a connection linking the Americas and Eurasia.
The Bering Land Bridge National Preserve is one of the most remote Protected areas of the United States, located on the Seward Peninsula. The National Preserve protects a remnant of the Bering Land Bridge that connected Asia with North America more than 13,000 years ago during the Pleistocene ice age. The majority of this land bridge now lies beneath the waters of the Chukchi and Bering Seas. During the glacial epoch this bridge was a migration route for people, animals, and plants whenever ocean levels fell enough to expose the land bridge. Archeologists disagree whether it was across this Bering Land Bridge, also called Beringia, that humans first migrated from Asia to populate the Americas, or whether it was via a coastal route.
Prehistoric Alaska begins with Paleolithic people moving into northwestern North America sometime between 40,000 and 15,000 years ago across the Bering Land Bridge in western Alaska; a date less than 20,000 years ago is most likely. They found their passage blocked by a huge sheet of ice until a temporary recession in the Wisconsin glaciation opened up an ice-free corridor through northwestern Canada, possibly allowing bands to fan out throughout the rest of the continent. Eventually, Alaska became populated by the Inuit and a variety of Native American groups. Trade with both Asia and southern tribes was active even before the advent of Europeans.
Venetian glass is glassware made in Venice, typically on the island of Murano near the city. Traditionally it is made with a soda–lime "metal" and is typically elaborately decorated, with various "hot" glass-forming techniques, as well as gilding, enamel, or engraving. Production has been concentrated on the Venetian island of Murano since the 13th century. Today Murano is known for its art glass, but it has a long history of innovations in glassmaking in addition to its artistic fame—and was Europe's major center for luxury glass from the High Middle Ages to the Italian Renaissance. During the 15th century, Murano glassmakers created cristallo—which was almost transparent and considered the finest glass in the world. Murano glassmakers also developed a white-colored glass that looked like porcelain. They later became Europe's finest makers of mirrors.
Cape Espenberg is a cape located on the Seward Peninsula in Alaska, on the Chukchi Sea coast.
Metallurgy in pre-Columbian America is the extraction, purification and alloying of metals and metal crafting by Indigenous peoples of the Americas prior to European contact in the late 15th century. Indigenous Americans have been using native metals from ancient times, with recent finds of gold artifacts in the Andean region dated to 2155–1936 BCE, and North American copper finds being dated to approximately 5000 BCE. The metal would have been found in nature without the need for smelting, and shaped into the desired form using hot and cold hammering without chemical alteration or alloying. To date "no one has found evidence that points to the use of melting, smelting and casting in prehistoric eastern North America."
William Wyvill Fitzhugh IV is an American archaeologist and anthropologist who directs the Smithsonian’s Arctic Studies Center and is a Senior Scientist at the National Museum of Natural History. He has conducted archaeological research throughout the circumpolar region investigating cultural responses to climate and environmental change and European contact. He has published numerous books and more than 150 journal articles, and has produced large international exhibitions and popular films. Of particular note are the many exhibition catalogues he has had edited, which make syntheses of scholarly research on these subjects available to visitors to public exhibitions.
Yup'ik doll is a traditional Eskimo style doll and figurine form made in the southwestern Alaska by Yup'ik people. Also known as Cup'ik doll for the Chevak Cup'ik dialect speaking Eskimos of Chevak and Cup'ig doll for the Nunivak Cup'ig dialect speaking Eskimos of Nunivak Island. Typically, Yup'ik dolls are dressed in traditional Eskimo style Yup'ik clothing, intended to protect the wearer from cold weather, and are often made from traditional materials obtained through food gathering. Play dolls from the Yup'ik area were made of wood, bone, or walrus ivory and measured from one to twelve inches in height or more. Male and female dolls were often distinguished anatomically and can be told apart by the addition of ivory labrets for males and chin tattooing for females. The information about play dolls within Alaska Native cultures is sporadic. As is so often the case in early museum collections, it is difficult to distinguish dolls made for play from those made for ritual. There were always five dolls making up a family: a father, a mother, a son, a daughter, and a baby. Some human figurines were used by shamans.
Old Bering Sea is an archaeological culture associated with a distinctive, elaborate circle and dot aesthetic style and is centered on the Bering Strait region; no site is more than 1 km from the ocean. Old Bering Sea is considered, following Henry B. Collins, the initial phase of the Northern Maritime tradition. Despite its name, several OBS sites lie on the Chukchi Sea. The temporal range of the culture is from 400 BC to possibly as late as 1300 AD. Another suggested range is from about 200 BC to 500 AD.
Syalakh culture is an early Neolithic culture of Yakutia and Eastern Siberia. It formed in the middle Lena river basin in the V — IV millenniums BCE as a result of the migration of tribes from Transbaikalia, which assimilated the local Sumnagin culture that was preceramic.
Chester S. Chard (1915–2002) was an American anthropologist who collaborated with Russian and Japanese scholars to establish the field of circumpolar or arctic anthropology. He received degrees at Harvard University (1937) and the University of California at Berkeley where he was one of Robert Lowie's last graduate students. He taught for over 20 years, mostly at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and published over 160 books and articles. His research focused on Old World prehistory, cultural history of North and East Asia, and the interhemispherical relationships of New World cultures and circumpolar problems. He founded the academic journal Arctic Anthropology, in 1962. He published on numerous topics and cultures, including the ball courts of the Southwest, Pre-Columbian trade, the Kamchadal culture, North American burial grounds, the prehistory of Siberia, Inner Asia, prehistoric Japan, the Nganasan people, Eskimos, and the Chukchi Peninsula.
