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An Archaeological Reconnaissance of the Middle and Lower Yukon Valley, Alaska2

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Frederica de Laguna*
Affiliation:
University Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Extract

During the summer of 1935, the University of Pennsylvania Museum sponsored an archaeological and geological survey of the middle and lower Yukon valley, Alaska. The work was financed through the generosity of the National Research Council and the American Philosophical Society. The party consisted of: Dr. A. J. Eardley, Department of Geology, University of Michigan; Mr. Kenneth Gorton, a student of geology at the same institution; Mr. Norman Reynolds, a student of anthropology at the University of Washington; and the writer.

The principal object of the expedition was to investigate the possibilities of finding ancient human remains in the Yukon valley. The discoveries of ancient artifacts (belonging to the so-called Folsom culture) in association with bones of extinct animals, show that human beings lived on the southern High Plains east of the Rockies at the end of the Pleistocene or during the early post-Pleistocene.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1936

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Footnotes

2

A preliminary report of this work is also appearing in a current number of the Miscellanaea of the American Philosophical Society.

References

4 F. H. H. Roberts, Jr., A Folsom Complex, Smithsonian Misc. Collections, Vol. 94, No. 4, June 20,1935.

5 Howard, E. B., Evidence of Early Man in America, University Museum Journal, Vol. XXIV, 2–3, Univ. of Pa., 1935 Google Scholar.

6 Dr. Mason is at present investigating the possible spread of Folsom types in northern Mexico.

7 Therkel Mathiassen, Archaeological Collections from the Western Eskimos, Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition, Vol. 10, No. 1, Copenhagen, 1930. J. Alden Mason, Excavations of Eskimo Thule Culture Sites at Point Barrow, Alaska, Proc. Twenty-third International Congress of Americanists, New York, 1930. Diamond Jenness, Archaeological Investigation in Bering Strait, Annual Report, National Museum of Canada for 1926, Ottawa, 1928. Henry B. Collins, Jr., Prehistoric Eskimo Culture on St. Lawrence Island, The Geographical Review, Vol. XXII, No. 1, Jan, 1932; Archeology of the Bering Sea Region, Smithsonian Report for 1933, Washington, 1935.

8 Ale šHrdli čka, Anthropological Investigations in Alaska, 46th. Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, 1930; Anthropological Work on the Kuskokwin River, Alaska, Exploration and Field-Work of the Smithsonian Institution in 1930.

9 Article by H. W. Krieger in Hrdli čka's Report, 1930.

10 Frederica de Laguna, The Archaeology of Cook Inlet, Alaska, 1934, Plate 71, pp. 177–179 (cf. next to last chapter).