ANCHORAGE, ALASKA—According to an Anchorage Daily News report, archaeologist Jeff Rasic of the National Park Service has investigated archaeological sites at Howard’s Pass, a several mile–wide tundra plateau located in the mountains of northern Alaska’s Brooks Range. The sites date back some 11,000 years, and include traces of houses, tent rings, food-storage pits, tool-making debris, and cairns that may have been used to help drive caribou into hunting traps. Wind-chill temperature in the pass can drop to about minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit—so cold that caribou can freeze to death. Yet some of the sites appeared to have been occupied during the winter, Rasic said. Half of the dwellings’ living area was set underground, with cold-trap tunnels at the entrances, he explained. Rasic thinks Inupiaq peoples may have chosen to live there to harvest caribou and fish, and explained that the Inupiaq name for Howard’s Pass is Akutuq, a word also used for a food product made of whipped animal fat, sugar, and berries, which resembles wind-driven snow. “If you are someone trying to escape clouds of mosquitoes, winds aren’t necessarily bad. And maybe a windswept place is good for winter travel—hard and crusty, good to get around on,” he added. For more on the archaeology of indigenous communities in Alaska, go to “Cultural Revival.”
