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Burins from Central Alaska*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

William Irving
William Irving*
Affiliation:
Harvard University-Cambridge, Mass.
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Extract

True burins that are directly comparable with a number of Old World types have recently appeared as prominent elements of a number of colleotions from the American arctic. Their areal distribution from Alaska (Giddings 1951) to Greenland (Knuth 1952; Meldgaard 1952) and possibly Labrador (Harp 1951: 215; 1953: 41), in a variety of coastal and inland sites, shows that the trait was not a novelty nor a figment of chance, but an integral part of several North American flint complexes. In certain instances, and particularly at the Alaskan sites, they are accompanied by other implements typologically similar to Old World Paleolithic and Mesolithic forms (Giddings 1951); elsewhere, they are found in complexes that may be more distinctively American (Knuth 1952; Meldgaard 1952; Harp 1951). Oddly enough, basal grinding, parallel flaking, fluted points, and other early American traits such as Oblique and Eden Yuma points, are more conspicuous in the “Mesolithic” Denbigh Flint complex than they are in stages found farther east, for which there is less evidence for close connections with the Old World. However, Harp reports a fluted point in a Newfoundland assemblage (1951: 209).

Type
Facts and Comments
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 20 , Issue 4Part1 , April 1955 , pp. 380 - 383
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1955

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Footnotes

*

Publication of this note, prepared in the fall of 1953, has been delayed by my absence during an extended period of field work. Several revisions and additions, made after the appearance of MacNeish's recent paper (1954) are apparent in the text. Discussion with MacNeish in 1953 resulted in our agreement on most, though perhaps not all, of the points of typology common to the Campus site and Pointed Mountain that are mentioned here. Ivar Skarland and James W. Van Stone, of the University of Alaska, and Hallam L. MoviUs, Jr., and Gordon R. Willey, of Harvard, have kindly read the manuscript and made pertinent suggestions.

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