article
A northern Athapaskan environment system in diachronic perspective
western Canadian journal of anthropology • 5 (3-4) • Published In 1975 • Pages: 92-124
By: Holmes, Charles E..
AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
Holmes uses a systems theory approach to resconstruct the prehistoric survival strategies of the Athapaskans in the Tanana River drainage in the Alaskan interior. He does this by examining the modern day ecosystem and reviewing the ethnographic data on the Athapaskans in the Tanana River drainage. He then describes several sites in the area, one of which, the Dry Creek site, dates to older than 9000 B.C. In the Tanana River drainage there is a hiatus of several thousand years where it appears people may not have inhabited the valley until the modern biological subsystem became established and the valley reforested. Holmes points out an oddity about the Tanana Valley in that microblade technology persisted there until around A.D. 1000 while it had disappeared around 2500 B.C. elsewhere in Alaska and Canada. Holmes believes the Athapaskan tradition began about 1000 B.C. and lasted until about A.D. 1850.
- SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
- Identification
- Reviews and critiques
- Location
- Fauna
- Flora
- Lithic industries
- Weapons
- General tools
- Chronologies and culture sequences
- Cultural stratigraphy
- traditionCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
- Proto-Athapaskans
- RegionThe area the document pertains to
- North America
- Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
- Arctic and Subarctic
- Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
- article
- Evaluation
- Creator TypeThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
- Archaeologist
- Document Rating A ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
- 4: Excellent Secondary Data
- NotesAdditional notes
- Charles E. Holmes
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 119-124)
- LCCNLibrary of Congress Control Number
- 81039011
- LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
- Athapaskan Indians--Antiquities