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<< Other Photo Pages >> Upward Sun River - Ancient Village or Settlement in United States in The West

Submitted by bat400 on Wednesday, 28 October 2015  Page Views: 13720

Multi-periodSite Name: Upward Sun River Alternative Name: Xaasaa Na'in, Little Delta Dune, 49XBD-298
Country: United States
NOTE: This site is 101.713 km away from the location you searched for.

Region: The West Type: Ancient Village or Settlement
Nearest Town: Fairbanks  Nearest Village: Delta Junction
Latitude: 64.220000N  Longitude: 145.71W
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
no data Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
no data Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
2
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Upward Sun River
Upward Sun River submitted by bat400_photo : University of Alaska Fairbanks photo courtesy of Ben Potter Stone projectile points and associated decorated antler foreshafts from the burial pit at the Upward Sun River site. http://uafcornerstone.net/potter_2014/ (Vote or comment on this photo)
Four different occupations, dating from 8880 to roughly 11300 (radio carbon years before the present,) are buried within a sand dune at the junction of the Tanana and Little Delta rivers in central Alaska. Two of the occupations include hearth sites, but the most intriguing may be from approximately 11,400 years ago, where a house was dug into the ground, and a hearth contains the evidence of how the people there lived and died.

University of Alaska excavations are on-going. The 9990 RCYBP (11,280-11,620 BC) occupation (Component 3) shows the dug depression of the floor of the house.
The floor was less than a foot deep, and 12 feet in diameter. Half a dozen post molds indicate uprights that supported walls and roof. Flaked stone from tool making was also found.
Animal bone remnants in a central hearth (ground squirrels, salmon, birds) indicate the house was occupied in summer.
But, the most exciting find in the hearth was the cremated remains of a child, two to four years old. The death of this child and the ritual marking its passing seems to have been the last activity in the house. The hearth and floor were covered over, without further food remains or chips from tool working.

Note: the site location given is approximate for the juncture of the Tanana and Little Delta rivers. It does not reflect the location of the site itself.

Journal Reference:
Ben A. Potter, Joel D. Irish, Joshua D. Reuther, and Holly J. McKinney. New insights into Eastern Beringian mortuary behavior: A terminal Pleistocene double infant burial at Upward Sun River. PNAS, November 10, 2014 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1413131111

Note: DNA from ancient Alaskan infants supports the human migration theory, see the comments on our page.
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"Upward Sun River" | Login/Create an Account | 5 News and Comments
  
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Ancient Alaska infants’ DNA supports human migration theory by bat400 on Wednesday, 28 October 2015
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Analysis of genetic material from the remains of two ice age infants discovered in Alaska has revealed connections to two ancient lineages of Native Americans, according to a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers in Alaska and Utah have documented that the infants had different mothers and were descended from two distinct lineages not previously identified in the Arctic.

“These infants are the earliest human remains in northern North America and they carry distinctly Native American lineages,” said O’Rourke, a senior author on the paper. “These genetic variations had not previously been known to have existed this far north and speak to the early genetic diversity of the time.”
The research supports the theory that this community descended from an earlier Beringian population, O’Rourke said.

“You don’t see any of these lineages that are distinctly Native American in Asia or even Siberia, so there had to be a period of isolation for these distinctive Native American lineages to have evolved away from their Asian ancestors. We believe that was in Beringia,” O’Rourke said.

The Upward Sun River infants are among human remains at only eight sites in North America older than 8,000 years from which researchers have obtained mitochondrial DNA, genetic information inherited only from mothers. Tackney, the paper’s lead author, said all five major Native American lineages have been found in these eight sites.

“The children also appear to have died during summer months when food should be the most plentiful,” Potter said. “This may indicate more resource stress than we have previously thought.”

Excavations of the site revealed human dwellings as well as animal remains, indicating a broad diet that included large and small mammals and, interestingly, fish. Potter and others identified these as chum salmon in a paper published by the same journal last month. The fish remains confirmed the earliest human use of salmon in North America. Researchers continue to explore the ancient lifeways reflected at this and other nearby sites.

Potter said these findings also lead to a better understanding of how ancient Native Americans adapted to dynamic climate conditions in the Arctic, the stressors they faced and how they engaged with their environment.

“Understanding human relationships to their environment in the ice age allows us to more accurately explore modern effects of climate change on human systems,” Potter said. “This new genetic analysis allows us to further understand the human capacity to deal with changing landscapes and natural resources as they and related populations expanded into the New World.”

For more, see University of Alaska Fairbanks
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Archaeologists discover remains of Ice Age infants in Alaska by bat400 on Sunday, 16 November 2014
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The remains of two Ice Age infants, buried more than 11,000 years ago at a site in Alaska, represent the youngest human remains ever found in northern North America, according to a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The site and its artifacts provide new insights into funeral practices and other rarely preserved aspects of life among people who inhabited the area thousands of years ago, according to Ben Potter, a researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the paper's lead author.

Potter led the archaeological team that made the discovery in fall of 2013 at an excavation of the Upward Sun River site, near the Tanana River in central Alaska. The researchers worked closely with local and regional Native tribal organizations as they conducted their research.

Potter and his colleagues note that the human remains and associated burial offerings, as well as inferences about the time of year the children died and were buried, could lead to new thinking about how early societies were structured, the stresses they faced as they tried to survive, how they treated the youngest members of their society, and how they viewed death and the importance of rituals associated with it.

Potter made the new find on the site of a 2010 excavation, where the cremated remains of another 3-year-old child were found. The bones of the two infants were found in a pit directly below a residential hearth where the 2010 remains were found.

"Taken collectively, these burials and cremation reflect complex behaviors related to death among the early inhabitants of North America," Potter said.

In the paper, Potter and his colleagues describe unearthing the remains of the two children in a burial pit under a residential structure about 15 inches below the level of the 2010 find. The radiocarbon dates of the newly discovered remains are identical to those of the previous find--about 11,500 years ago--indicating a short period of time between the burial and cremation, perhaps a single season.

Also found within the burials were unprecedented grave offerings. They included shaped stone points and associated antler foreshafts decorated with abstract incised lines, representing some of the oldest examples of hafted compound weapons in North America.

"The presence of hafted points may reflect the importance of hunting implements in the burial ceremony and with the population as whole," the paper notes.

The researchers also examined dental and skeletal remains to determine the probable age and sex of the infants at the time of the death: One survived birth by a few weeks, while the other died in utero. The presence of three deaths within a single highly mobile foraging group may indicate resource stress, such as food shortages, among these early Americans.

Such finds are valuable to science because, except in special circumstances like those described in the paper, there is little direct evidence about social organization and mortuary practices of such early human cultures, which had no written languages.

The artifacts--including the projectile points, plant and animal remains--may also help to build a more complete picture of early human societies and how they were structured and survived climate changes at the end of the last great Ice Age. The presence of two burial events--the buried infants and cremated child--within the same dwelling could also indicate relatively longer-term residential occupation of the site than previously expected.

The remains of salmon-like fish and ground squirrels in the burial pit indicate that the site was likely occupied by hunter-gatherers between June and August.

"The deaths occurred during the summer, a time period when regional resource abundance and diversity was high and nutritional stress should be low, suggesting higher levels of mortality than may be expected give our current underst

Read the rest of this post...
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Ice Age Child Found in Prehistoric Alaskan Home by bat400 on Saturday, 05 March 2011
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One of the first Americans—only three years old at the time—was laid to rest in a pit inside his or her house 11,500 years ago, a new excavation reveals. The ancient home site and human remains—the oldest known in subarctic North America—provide an unprecedented glimpse into the daily lives of Ice Age Americans, scientists say.

What's more, if the remains yield usable DNA, the child could help uncover just who was living on the North American side of the land bridge that likely still connected the Americas to Asia at the time, experts added.

One thing that apparently isn't a mystery is how the child was memorialized.

"You can see that the child was laid in the pit—a fire hearth inside the house—and the fire was started on top of the child," study co-author Joel Irish said. Charred wood from the pit allowed scientists to assign a radiocarbon date to the site.

After the cremation, the child's hunter-gatherer clan apparently filled the 18-inch-deep (45-centimeter-deep) hearth with soil and abandoned the dwelling. No other artifacts exist above the fill line.

Even the new find represents only 20 percent of the child's skeleton, offering few clues as to how the child died. But what's left makes it clear that the youngster died before burial and was placed in a position of peaceful repose.

"From our perspective, the child is certainly extraordinary, but the house is also unique," said study co-author Ben Potter.

The dwelling's floor had been dug about 11 inches (27 centimeters) into the ground. Poles may have supported walls and a roof, according to telltale stains in the sediment.

In other words, this was a home—the oldest known in Alaska.

"All of the other finds dating to this period or earlier tend to be associated with either short-term hunting camps, or workshops where people are gathering high-quality stone materials and working them into tools," said Potter, an anthropologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

"We picture these people as foragers hunting large game, like bison or elk. But the fishing element is kind of new, and it's kind of striking that there are so many fish."
The apparent seasonal pattern of hunting and fishing, Potter added, is similar to that practiced by later Alaska natives.

Study co-author Irish, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, noted that some of the site's stone artifacts, construction style, and animal remains recall those found in today's Siberia.

They're particularly reminiscent, he said, of Siberia's Ushki Lake. At that roughly 14,000-year-old site, excavations have revealed a culture that has some parallels with later Native American cultures. Ushki is also home to the only other known burial site of this era in the vicinity of the Bering land bridge, also called Beringia.

For more, see Brian Handwerk's article at news.nationalgeographic.com.
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Oldest subarctic North American human remains found by bat400 on Saturday, 05 March 2011
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A newly excavated archaeological site in Alaska contained the cremated remains of one of the earliest inhabitants of North America. The site may provide rare insights into the burial practices of Ice Age people and shed new light on their daily lives. UAF archaeologist Ben Potter and four colleagues published their discovery in the Feb. 25 edition of the journal Science.

The skeletal remains appear to be that of an approximately three-year-old child, found in an ancient fire pit within an equally ancient dwelling at the Upward Sun River site, near the Tanana River in central Alaska. Radiocarbon dating of wood at the site indicates the cremation took place roughly 11,500 years ago, when the Bering Land Bridge may still have connected Alaska and Asia. Initial observations of the teeth by UAF bioarchaeologist Joel Irish provide confirmation that the child is biologically affiliated with Native Americans and Northeast Asians.

The find is also notable because archaeologists and Alaska Natives are working hand-in-hand to ensure the excavation and subsequent examination of the remains will benefit science and heritage studies in a way that is respectful of traditional Athabascan culture.

"This site reflects many different behaviors never before seen in this part of the world during the last Ice Age, and the preservation and lack of disturbance allows us to explore the lifeways of these ancient peoples in new ways," said Potter.

The researchers note that the pit contained not only the child's remains[--]the researchers estimate less than 20 percent of the skeleton survived the cremation[--]but also remains of small mammals, birds, and fish as well as plant remains. Because the human remains were in the uppermost part of the pit, above the animal remains, the researchers suspect the pit was not originally designed as a grave. Evidence also suggests the occupants abandoned the house after the cremation-burial.

The child has been named Xaasaa Cheege Ts'eniin [haw-SAW CHAG tse-NEEN], which means "Upward Sun River Mouth Child." The name is associated with the local Native place-name, Xaasaa Na' [haw-SAW NA], or Upward Sun River.

Both researchers and tribal leaders have said that the process of working together on this new find has fostered mutual respect and cooperation.

The local federally recognized tribe, Healy Lake Traditional Council, and its affiliated regional consortium, Tanana Chiefs Conference, sanctioned Potter and his colleagues' excavation and analysis. Through consultation initiated at the time of the discovery, Healy Lake and TCC support the scientific examination of both the site and the remains themselves.

"I would like to learn everything we can about this individual," said First Chief Joann Polston, of Healy Lake Traditional Council. TCC President Jerry Isaac added that "This find is especially important to us since it is in our area, but the discovery is so rare that it is of interest for all humanity."

Based on the stratigraphy and other evidence, the researchers describe a possible sequence for how the remains came to be interred at the site.
They hypothesize that a small group of people, which included adult females and young children, was foraging in the vicinity of this residential camp. A pit was dug within a house, used for cooking and/or a means of disposing of food debris for weeks or months preceding the death of the child. The child died and was cremated in the pit, which was likely filled with surrounding soil soon thereafter. The house was soon abandoned.

For more, see the article by Marmian Grimes at the University of Alaska Fairbanks news release website. Photos and video.
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