article

The Dixthada site: results of 1971 excavations

western Canadian journal of anthropology5 (3-4)Published In 1975 • Pages: 148-158

By: Shinkwin, Anne D..

AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
Shinkwin briefly describes the findings of the 1971 excavations at Dixthada, a site on Fish Creek near Mansfield Village in the Tanana River Valley in Alaska. Rainey, who excavated mostly in the middens, first excavated the site in 1936 and 1937. Cook and McKennan revisited the site in 1971 to determine if an earlier microblade component could be isolated from the later Athapaskan material. The microblades were mostly found in a strata of yellow silt which contained mostly lithics and no copper. Shinkwin analyzed the 1971 assemblage with Rainey's and divided the artifacts into two levels, the Upper, with a date of 470 ± 60 B.C., and the Lower, with dates of A.D. 1560 ± 50 and A.D. 1180 ± 40. Their collections are described. Dixthada is compared to a few other sites. Shinkwin concludes the Upper Level (A.D. 1000 - 1800) is Northern Athapaskan.
SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
Identification
Prehistory
Bone, horn, and shell technology
Lithic industries
Metallurgy
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.
5: Excellent Primary Data
NotesAdditional notes
Anne D. Shinkwin
Includes bibliographical references (p. 157-158)
LCCNLibrary of Congress Control Number
81039011
LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
Athapaskan Indians--Antiquities