The culture history of northern Alaska defines the Northwest NPR-A Planning Area. For this IAP/EIS, northern Alaska is that portion of Alaska north of the Continental Divide or that area north of 68° N. Latitude. The culture history of northern Alaska differs significantly from the culture history of other regions of North America since its earliest human residents appear to be the first people in the Western Hemisphere. The physical remains of roughly 12,000 years of human occupation are within northern Alaska, and it is the only place where the prehistoric culture history of the Western Hemisphere can be traced from its origin to today. However, since much of ancient Beringia now makes up the floor of the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, the initial chapter of the region's culture history is speculative.

The term Beringia describes an ecological region that existed during the glacial episodes of the Pleistocene, when world-wide sea level was as much as 300 ft lower than today, creating a dry-land connection between Siberia (Asia) and Alaska (North America). Beringia included most of northeastern Siberia, that part of Alaska to the Alaska Peninsula, and the land bridge connecting them. This area was a vast, mostly unglaciated landmass of nearly 2 million mi² with an extreme continental climate (Hopkins et al., 1982).

Most archaeologists agree that northern Alaska was initially occupied by immigrants from Northeast Asia who crossed the land bridge from Siberia to Alaska around 15,000 years Before Present (BP). Some time before 11,500 BP descendants of these immigrants moved south, populating the rest of the Western Hemisphere. However, that is probably as far as consensus would go. Although these Asian immigrants produced some bifacial stone tools, such as projectile points, the basis of their stone tool industry was a core and blade technology producing unifacial tools such as burins, scrapers, and drills on blades. The latter is a common trait among the late Pleistocene Siberian cultures (Dikov, 1977, 1979, 1996, 1997).

There is little doubt that the various cultural groups involved in the earliest migrations into the North American Arctic were deterred from moving south because of the glacial ice mass that isolated Alaska from the rest of the North American continent (Kunz, 1996). While contained within this unglaciated but ice-bound region, some of these immigrant groups may have coalesced and developed a stone tool technology-specific to procuring the large mammals of the region such as bison, muskoxen, and caribou. Although it did produce some blades, this evolving stone tool industry was based on bifacial technology, which produced tools such as lanceolate projectile points and knives, as well as distinctive unifacial tools such as spurred scrapers and gravers made on flakes rather than blades. If so, these people would have been the first Paleoindians, as defined by technology and culture.

Although northern Alaska may well have been the location of the Paleoindian culture and it may have been where the stone tool industry first evolved, it was not where Paleoindians were first recognized. Paleoindians were first noted in an archaeological site more than 3000 mi south of Alaska at Folsom, New Mexico in 1926. It was not until the late 1970's that Paleoindian sites were discovered in northern Alaska, a discovery that caused archaeologists to reexamine theories of emerging populations in the New World. Since the middle of the last century, Paleoindians have been considered by most scholars to represent the first indigenous, geographically widespread North American cultural tradition (Kunz and Reanier, 1995). As the climate and vegetation began to change at the end of the Pleistocene with the large Ice Age mammals disappearing and the ecosystems reorganizing, the Paleoindians vanished from northern Alaska's archaeological record. From approximately 9,700 years BP until 7,800 years BP, there is no solid evidence of human occupation in northern Alaska (Kunz, 2000). This abruptly ends the first chapter of northern Alaska's culture history.

The loosely defined Siberian-affiliated Paleo-Arctic tradition, which appears to be as ancient as the Paleoindian tradition, is adjacent to the Northwest NPR-A Planning Area on the south side of the Continental Divide (Anderson, 1970). Although some researchers (Anderson, 1970; Bowers, 1982; Gal, 1982) have suggested that a few sites derived from the Paleo-Arctic tradition may lie north of the Continental Divide, this is uncertain because the tradition lacks diagnostic artifacts and has no radiocarbon evidence. However, since the boundary separating northern Alaska from the area to the south is little more than a line drawn on a map, the Paleo-Arctic tradition may well be part of northern Alaska's culture history. Because of its ephemeral nature, various researchers define and describe the Paleo-Arctic tradition differently (Anderson, 1970; Dumond, 1987; West, 1981), making it difficult to determine an end date for this techno/cultural group. However, the consensus among experts is that the end came sometime after 8,000 years BP.

The Northern Archaic tradition (Anderson, 1968) followed the transitional Ice Age cultures group. Northern Archaic tradition groups inhabited northern Alaska sometime after 8,000 years BP until 3,000 to 2,000 years BP. The hallmarks of the tradition's stone tool assemblages are large, bifacial side/corner notched and stemmed projectile points, bifacial knives, and large scraoral. Although the mammoth, bison, and horse of the Ice Age had disappeared, these people inhabited the region and exploited its resources (large terrestrial mammals such as caribou, muskoxen, and moose) in much the same way as their ancient predecessors.

Roughly 5,000 years BP, a new cultural entity appeared in northern Alaska - the Eskimo. While Eskimos were not among the first residents of northern Alaska, their varied and sophisticated technology allowed them to exploit the resources of the region more than their Northern Archaic predecessors/neighbors. Soon they dominated the area and grew more numerous than any previous groups who had inhabited the region. Their technological sophistication enabled them to exploit the coastal and inland ecosystems and to expand eastward into Canada and Greenland. There is an unbroken record of their use of northern Alaska since they first appeared in the region (Reanier, 1997; Sheehan, 1997). The technological signatures of the Eskimo cultures are a chipped stone industry of small, often delicate, well-made bifacial projectile points, ground stone implements, a variety of well-made, often decorated bone, ivory, and antler tools and items of personal adornment, as well as a proliferation of composite tools (Irving, 1964; Dumond, 1987).

The succession of the Eskimo Continuum cultures began with the Denbigh Flint Complex people, followed by the Choris, Norton and Ipiutak cultures (Giddings, 1964; Dumond, 1987). These closely related cultural groups compose what archaeologists generally refer to as the Arctic Small Tool tradition (Irving, 1964). These early Eskimos spent as much or more time, living in and exploiting the subsistence resources of the foothills and mountains of the Brooks Range, as they did the Arctic coast.

About 1,600 years ago, there seems to have been a switch to coastal activities. The Birnirk people, who developed technology that allowed them to successfully exploit maritime resources (particularly whales) more than the earlier Eskimo cultures, initiated this change (Stanford, 1976). This trend continued with the Thule people into the historic period. At the same time, related but less numerous populations, referred to generically as Late Prehistoric Eskimos, continued to exploit the resources of the interior. They subsisted primarily on caribou and other large terrestrial mammals while wintering on the margins of lakes with plentiful fish (Gerlach and Hall, 1988). These people may have been the antecedents of the modern Nunamiut or Inland Eskimo who seem to appear in the archaeological record between 400 and 300 years BP (Kunz and Phippen, 1988).

Some of the earliest history of northern Alaska played out in this region with contact between the Euro-American arctic whaling fleet and Alaskan Natives beginning in the middle of the 19th Century. More than 50 years of continuous contact followed, drastically altering a traditional culture and Native Alaskan lifestyle (Brower, 1942; Foote, 1964; Bockstoce, 1978). In just a few generations, the indigenous people of northern Alaska moved from the Stone Age to the Atomic Age.

It is noteworthy that it is rare for a single cultural group to dominate a region as large as northern Alaska for such an extended period. The modern indigenous peoples of northern Alaska are as successful today as their ancestors of 5,000 years BP were, subsisting in one of the harshest environments on earth. The evidence supporting this history resides in thousands of prehistoric and historic sites throughout the region. These sites are the physical manifestation of the culture history of northern Alaska, a nonrenewable resource. This resource must be protected and managed wisely for its scientific and cultural value.

To date, about 400 cultural resource sites have been identified within the Northwest NPR-A Planning Area. Most of these sites are prehistoric and they are the result of inventory conducted as part of the 105c studies undertaken during the late 1970's (Davis et al., 1981; Hall and Gal, 1988). The 105c archaeological surveys inventoried less than 3 percent of the land area within the Northwest NPR-A Planning Area, with most sites clustered in just a few locales. This distribution does not reflect the density of prehistoric people based on the locational preference. Rather, it suggests that only a few portions of the Planning Area have been examined through organized reconnaissance of cultural sites: e.g., well site locales, portions of the coast, and a few of the major drainages. The absence of recorded cultural sites across most of the Planning Area is simply the result of limited work there (Davis et al., 1981; North Slope Borough, 1978; Hall and Gal, 1988; Kassam and Wainwright Traditional Council, 2000). Where inventories and surveys have been conducted, cultural sites have usually been found. This suggests that there are a tremendous number of undiscovered cultural resource locales in the region and that examination of the unsurvyed portions of the Planning Area would dramatically increase the number of known sites. Known sites include evidence of irregularly used prehistoric camps and historic trading locales, fishing and hunting camps, and village sites. The sites recorded in the Traditional Land Use Inventory (North Slope Borough, 1978) display the greatest density on the major rivers and associated drainages and along portions of the coast (Kassam and Wainwright Traditional Council, 2000).

The NSB's Traditional Land Use Inventory and the Wainwright Traditional Council's Human Ecology Mapping Project compile subsistence resource/use locations, landmarks, travel routes, and special significance locales in the living memory of the Inupiat people. The Planning Area contains extensive locales. This graphically demonstrates that the communal cultural memory of the Inupiat people is a large and extremely valuable resource essential to the NPR-A planning process and will be equally important for guiding future identification of mitigation sites, if development occurs.

Most of the cultural sites in the Planning Area are, by virtue of their isolation and remoteness, protected from most types of impacts other than those caused by nature. The majority of the prehistoric sites however, are partially exposed or shallowly buried and therefore, vulnerable to impacts from human activity. Almost without exception, historic sites lie on the surface and are extremely vulnerable. Although most surface-disturbing activities occur during the winter when snow covers the deeply frozen ground, damage to or destruction of cultural sites can occur. For this reason, foreknowledge of planned surface-disturbing activities, whether planned for the winter or summer, is essential if these resources are to be protected, as directed by law and policy.