Yukon College anthropologist confirms new Pleistocene archaeological site

A new Pleistocene era archaeological site has been discovered by Yukon College (YC) Anthropologist, Norm Easton, assisted by YC field students and the First Nations youth from Healy Lake, Alaska.

Last August, Easton conducted an exploratory survey of the Linda’s Point site on the shores of Healy Lake, Alaska in collaboration with the Tanana Chief’s Conference and the Healy Lake Village Council. Several of the test pits were expanded into one meter excavation units, one of which contained several well defined hearth features associated with flakes from stone tools. Two separate radio-carbon dates on isolated charcoal from one of the hearths returned similar dates of 11,150 radio-carbon years. Adjusted to account for fluctuations in the radio-carbon calendar the date is equivalent to between 13,170 and 12,930 calendar years ago.

This occupation is tentatively assigned to the prehistoric Chindadn complex culture of the interior sub arctic. This newly discovered site joins a handful of similarly dated sites in the region, including the Little John site in Yukon that Easton has been excavating over the past decade.

Easton has been invited to continue excavations at the Linda Point site for the Tanana Chief’s conference in August this year with graduates from his summer field school in Subarctic Archaeology and Ethnography. “One of the unique features of the summer field program is our collaboration with First Nation communities and our academic partners in the United States”, said Norm Easton, instructor, anthropology. “In addition to undergraduate students from Yukon and around the world, we will also be working with graduate students from the University of New Mexico and the Centre for First Americans at Texas A & M University”. Student registrations for this summer’s field program will be accepted until May 2nd.

“Yukon College is excited to offer our students the opportunity to participate in discoveries of this significance and be a part of internationally recognized research conducted by our faculty”, said Dr. Deb Bartlette, dean, Applied Arts.

An illustrated presentation of his 2010 field work findings will be presented at Yukon College at noon in the Pit on Tuesday April 12th (today).