Archaeology of Fisherman Lake: western District of MacKenzie, N.W.T.

• Main Author: Millar, James F. V.
• Other Authors: MacNeish, Richard Stockton
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: University of Calgary 1968
• Subjects: F 5916 M54 1968 Microfilm; Northwest Territories - Antiquities; Fisherman Lake; Northwest Territories; Arctic; Spence; McLeod; Liard; Fish Lake; Fort Liard; Kenzie; Spence River; Pointed Mountain; Athabascan; Mackenzie Basin
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1880/2111; https://doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/12030

Bibliography: p. 458-496. The archaeological and geological data collected during 2 field seasons in the Fisherman Lake Valley of the western MacKenzie Basin produced a sequence of 12 cultural complexes representing a series of occupations extending from the late Pleistocene to the present. Interpretation of the glacial and sedimentary characteristics of the region and a series of radiocarbon dates provide a chronological framework for the sequence. The provenience of the earliest 2 complexes implies habitation of the valley prior to the final Lauren tide ice-stand in the western MacKenzie Basin. The geographic and physiographic location of the valley in the central section of the Eastern Cordilleran Migration Corridor allows correlation of previous work in the western interior with that in the eastern interior Arctic, as well as between the northern and central latitudes of the continent. Analysis of the indicated relationships results in a tentative reconstruction of population movement through the western MacKenzie Basin. The earliest 3 complexes, Hughes, McLeod and Cordilleran show evidence of separate movements from antecedents in the northwest. The following 2 complexes, Stem Point and Agate Basin Plana, appear derived from developments in the central plains and central western intermontane plateau region. In the subsequent Julian Complex there appear several lithic technologies related to the northern intermontane plateau and the Alaskan lowlands. These persist into the Pointed Mountain Complex, but are gradually replaced during the Fish Lake, JcRw8-l W and Mac-Kenzie Complexes by the ethnographic Athabascan pattern found in the Spence River and Fort Liard Complexes.