The archaeological site of Anangula represents one of the earliest evidence of human occupation of the Arctic region of North America.
The Anangula site is located on the Umnak island, a small island of the Aleutian archipelago, off the coast of the Alaska peninsula. It was occupied ca 8000-8500 years ago (ca 6500-6000-4500 BC). Archaeological work in the mid 1960s and 1970s revealed a distribution of stone tools, such as hammerstones, projectile points, large blades and knives sealed in a layer of volcanic ashes dating through radiocarbon to ca 6550-5550 BC.
The site lies on a cliff and is considered a settlement of hunter-gatherers with an economy based on marine resources. The site was probably accessible only by boat and boats were also used for traveling among islands and for hunting sea mammals. Furthermore, the site seems to have been composed of elliptical houses partially dug into the ground. Unfortunately, no organic materials preserved in the acidic soils formed by volcanic ashes, therefore we have no evidence of possible implements made out of animal bones, antler or ivory.
Archaeologists are debating if the later cultural tradition, called the Aleutian tradition, which began around 2500 BC, was a direct descendent of the Anangula tradition or if the Aleutian islands were occupied by a new wave of migrants, considering that the stone toolkits recovered by archaeologists and referred to as the Anangula tradition, whose stone technology largely differs from these later materials.
The evidence at Anangula seems to speak for a discontinuity between the Aleutian Tradition and the earlier Anangula culture, suggesting a reoccupation of the site after its abandonment.
- See more about Aleutian Tradition
Sources
This glossary entry is a part of the About.com guide to the North American Archaeology and the Dictionary of Archaeology.
Gibbon, Guy (Ed.), 1998, Archaeology of Prehistoric Native America. An Encyclopedia, Garland Publishing Inc.
McCartney, Allen P. and Douglas W. Veltre, 1999, Aleutian Island Prehistory: Living in Insular Extremes in World Archaeology, Vol. 30, No. 3, Arctic Archaeology, pp. 503-515