Archaeologists discover remains of Ice Age infants in AlaskaBy MARMIAN GRIMES
November 12, 2014
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.
University of Alaska Fairbanks professors Ben Potter and Josh Reuther excavate the burial pit at the Upward Sun River site.
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.
Stone projectile points and associated decorated antler foreshafts from the burial pit at the Upward Sun River site.
“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.
Members of the archaeology field team watch as University of Alaska Fairbanks professors Ben Potter and Josh Reuther excavate the burial pit at the Upward Sun River site.
The artifacts - including the projectile points and plant and animal remains—may also help to build a more complete picture of early human societies and how they were structured, as well as how they 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 understanding” of survival strategies of the period, the authors write.
Marmian Grimes is the Senior Public Information Officer Editor's Note:
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