The role of quartz in the lithic technology of the western upper Cook Inlet ancestral Dena'ina

• Main Author: Rogers, Monty J.
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: University of Alaska Anchorage 2015
• Subjects: American studies|Archaeology; Dena'ina; Alaska
• Online Access: http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=1605241

This thesis examines the ways in which ancestral Dena’ina Athabascans, who once inhabited the Ch’u’itnu Archaeological District of Alaska, incorporated quartz into multiple aspects of their lithic technology. The Ch’u’itnu Archaeological District is in western Upper Cook Inlet, north of the community of Tyonek, an area in which quartz was available in the glacial till, along river and creek banks, and the Cook Inlet shoreline as a raw material for stone tools. Research methods included documenting qualitative and quantitative attributes of débitage, splintered pieces and cores, groundstone tools, flaked tools, other lithic artifacts, and evidence of thermal alteration. Results show that 87 percent (n=1677) of the 1930 lithic artifacts comprising the Ch’u’itnu Archaeological District lithic assemblage were made of quartz, and that débitage was the most common artifact type. Results indicate that the ancestral Dena’ina who once occupied the Ch’u’itnu Archaeological District, used quartz throughout their lithic technology, which included tools and boiling stones, in a process by which thermal alteration blurred the lines between distinct artifact types.