Past Beringian Cultural Exchange and Interaction: a Study of Ceramic Technology
Project ID: P18AC00488
Federal Agency: National Park Service
Partner Institution: Portland State University
Fiscal Year: 2018
Initial Funding: $152,824
Total Funding: $152,824
Project Type: Research
Project Disciplines: Cultural
Principal Investigator: Anderson, Shelby
Agreement Technical Representative: Neitlich, Peter
Abstract: The objective of this Agreement is to support research at Portland State University (PSU) on “Past Beringian Cultural Exchange and Interaction: a Study of Ceramic Technology”. Shelby Anderson (PSU) will serve as the project Principal Investigator (PI). This project was selected for funding by the Shared Beringian Heritage Program ‘s 2018 funding proposal competition (Notice of Funding Opportunity P18AC00026).
Beringia was a region of intense interaction (human, animal, plant, etc.) for millennia. This region was a critical pathway for the peopling of North America and has since continued to be a source of ideas, technology, and human movement for thousands of years. While archaeologists have established broader past patterns of interaction and migration, many questions remain about the ways that people expanded, contracted, and invested in social networks in relationship to external forces of cultural change. The research supported by this agreement is directed at studying pre-contact cultural interaction in Beringia through analysis of archaeological ceramic technology. The questions we seek to address are: What is the geography of Beringian interaction networks in the past and how did these change over time? This research builds on the Principal Investigator’s (PI) previous and on-going study of ceramics from northwest and
northern Alaska. This work established that ceramics were part ofBeringian exchange networks over the last I 000 years, and that networks changed over time in relationship to shifting settlement patterns. Prior research raised further questions about long term patterns of cultural exchange between northwest Alaskans and the broader Beringian region. Addressing these questions requires additional research of a broader geographic and temporal scope.