Yukon College Field School in Subarctic Archaeology and Ethnography

New paper out with Jordan Handley on fine-grained volcanic toolstones at Little John. Download for free for 50 days at the link below. Dont forget the Supplementary file which contains details on all 46 culturally relevant dates, and summarizes the radiocarbon chronology and stratigraphy.

https://can01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fauthors.elsevier.com%2Fa%2F1fFaD%2CrVDBbx5c&data=05%7C01%7Cneaston%40yukonu.ca%7C132c7a98d8004bc83db808da4f2017cb%7C6f29bcf53b994991aa3adb8e42bc54df%7C0%7C1%7C637909296500828142%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=uRGRxF8rzm9fkSyeB5%2BAy2E5F3jUWKt7367uwfvWOuM%3D&reserved=0

Also check out Yukon Heritage Branch publication of Jordans use wear analysis of the Chindadn component at Little John and the identification of a hide-working toolkit at

https://emrlibrary.gov.yk.ca/Tourism/occasional%20papers%20in%20yukon%20archaeology/TC_JDHandley_No21.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0cE4BLluSoOZUJDXjJf8jKQfhFyPvSiN-kl-svKwluD_PIfFmonMKVdBc

More to come as the year progresses.
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"An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin" is now online at the US National Parks Service website:

An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin - Wrangell - St Elias National Park & Preserve (U.S. National Park Service) An Ethnohistory of the Chisana River Basin

Jordan Handley's MA thesis is now available:
Women and hide-working at the Little John Site (KdVo-6), Yukon Territory : a feminist application of use-wear analysis
UBC Theses and Dissertations
Handley, Jordan Danelle — 2020

This is the second thesis Jordan has completed using the Little John collection and makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of Yukon's oldest archaeological site as well as one of the few that uses a feminist methodology. Her honours undergraduate thesis on the Spectral Elemental Analysis of Basaltic Materials from the Little John Site using x-ray flourescence was completed in 2013.

Women and hide-working at the Little John Site (KdVo-6), Yukon Territory : a feminist application of use-wear analysis Amongst the Indigenous peoples of northern North America, hide-processing is dominated by female labour. The toolkit used is technologically variable and frequently expedient in nature. Indigenous groups from throughout northern North America were reviewed that demonstrate this gendered division of....

New paper out and available for free for fifty days at this url: https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1Zypk-JVbkuQH

Thanks to Todd Kristensen and all the co-authors for including me in this study.

The movement of obsidian in Subarctic Canada: Holocene social relationships and human responses to a large-scale volcanic eruption Lithic provenance analyses offer means to reconstruct ancestral social relationships in Subarctic North America. We summarize sourced obsidian data fr…

I went into hospital for a five day surgical visit on April 2nd but things did not go as well as planned leading to further surgery and an extended recovery time here at Whitehorse hospital. I am well on the mend now and am going home today (44 days later) to convalesce further and get back to living a good life - which includes carrying on with Little John analysis.

Mike Grooms is finishing up his dissertation text on LJ geoarchaeology, while Jordan Handley has her sample of Allerod Chindadn component artefacts in hand at UBC where she is undertaking high resolution use wear analysis with Dr. David Pokotylo. I am hoping to complete a geo-chronology paper next month.

Meantime here's a photo of the 2006 field crew on our survey excursion to Yikahh Mann' for a throwback thursday. . . .

We will be doing a public presentation updating our progress in analysis of the Little John and related borderland sites for International Archaeology Day at the Yukon Beringia Centre this Saturday, October 20th. Doors open at 12:30 for this free event that includes museum access, displays from the site, and cake!

Mike Grooms is looking to excavate a couple of units at Little John to collect some final samples for his dissertation - so, if anyone would like to drop by the site between July 15th and 22nd to lend a hand with a trowel and a screen, you would be more than welcome. Message me back for more info if you are interested.

From the field to the lab Yukon College archaeologist Norm Easton has been unearthing the secrets of the area around the Yukon-Alaska border for more than 25 years. This year, for the first time, he is leaving the field to focus on doing research in the laboratory...

As I move deep into the historic archive of Little John with a view towards a comprehensive comprehension of the 15 years of work at the site we're discovering all sorts of interesting things. For example today's work has led to the realization that this biface fragment on the bottom of the photo (originally designated a lanceolate base) is probably a Chindadn point base. Round base, really thin, and it comes from the unit west of the definitive Chindadn shown at the top of the photo. Within the size range, within the same stratigraphic layer on the Apex Lobe (Loess below B) and with an associated date on bison teeth at c. 13 Kya calibrated. What do you think?

New 3-D scanner has entered the lab thanks to a generous Faculty Research grant - testing it out this week with a view towards digitizing and making available 3-D images of key artefacts from Little John and elsewhere in my work. The shot here is of a Bison centrum found with two others and a flake in our Loess below Paleosol level, one of which brought back to us our first 14 Kya date. Luckily, the same Faculty research fund has also provided me resources to hire two student lab workers to assist in this and related Borderlands projects. So while fieldwork at LJ has ended, we are very excited about the results emerging over the next few years. . . .

Crunching data in Whitehorse through sun and rain - interesting trends emerging. . . .

Packed up my little camp in Beaver Creek and heading back to the 'horse to spend the rest of the summer working on a summary report for Little John and the borderlands prehistory and developing further my new course on the State and Indigenous societies. Here's the interesting possibility - I may get the Little John summary out before either Broken Mammoth or Swan Point. . . .