Abstract

Solecki, Irving, Foote, Anderson and Hall conducted limited and dispersed archaeological investigations in the Noatak National Preserve, Northwest Alaska. When the 2.65 million hectare Preserve was designated by the U.S. Congress in 1980, only 136 archaeological sites had been reported within its boundaries. In 1992 the U.S. National Park Service began systematic reconnaissance-level surveys and test excavations in the Preserve; nearly 1,500 sites are now recorded. The annual progress of the U.S. National Park Service survey effort is presented as a back-drop for new archaeological sites radiocarbon-dated to the early and mid-Holocene. These new data, which significantly augment the stratified record at the Onion Portage Site in the Kobuk Valley National Park, Northwest Alaska, are provisionally synthesized. Congeners of these new early and mid-Holocene Noatak assemblages can be expected to occur as far east as the northern Yukon Territory.