From Newsgroup: sci.anthropology.paleo


https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618225004306

Stone and mammoth ivory tool production,
circulation, and human dispersals in the
middle Tanana Valley, Alaska: Implications
for the Pleistocene peopling of the Americas

Abstract
In the middle Tanana Valley of central Alaska,
the Holzman archaeological site is located
along Shaw Creek's west bank. For the last
three decades, the Tanana Valley has been the
focus of intense Late Pleistocene archaeological
and geological investigations into the
interaction between the First Alaskans and Ice
Age megafauna, particularly woolly mammoth.
Archaeological excavations at the Holzman site
have uncovered expedient tools on local quartz
with well-preserved hearths, avifauna, and
megafauna. Evidence for cooking and ivory tool
manufacture dated to 14,000 years ago (14 ka)
in component 5b (C5b) has been demonstrated rCo
making Holzman among the earliest sites in the
Americas. In the 13.7 ka C5a, an extensive
workshop event left abundant local quartz
artifacts behind, the by-product of mammoth
ivory reduction and manufacture of ivory blanks
or preforms, and the earliest known ivory rod
tools in the Americas. The Holzman site
contributes new information to a growing
archaeological record of the middle Tanana
Valley during the Late Glacial period. Based on
current evidence, the confluence of Shaw Creek
with the Tanana River was especially active
during the initial arrival of Indigenous people.
The subsequent selection of local quartz, cherts,
and siltstone occurred with a particular focus on
the harvest of woolly mammoth ivory. The evidence
suggests a late southern migration by ancestral
Clovis people south of the continental ice sheets
into the mid-continental North America sometime
between 14-13 ka.
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