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- Lab number
- Beta-111670
- Field number
- CMC-1508
- Material dated
- caribou bone collagen; collagène osseux de caribou
- Taxa dated
- Rangifer tarandus (NiVk-1: 252-6, id. by R.E. Morlan)
- Locality
- right bank of the Firth River where it flows out of the Buckland Mountains, 152 m asl, just above the apex of the Firth River delta, northern Yukon Territory
- Map sheet
- 117 D/05
- Submitter
- D.W. Clark
- Date submitted
- April 19, 2001
- Measured Age
- 3250 ± 40
- Normalized Age
- 3350 ± 40
- δ13C (per mil)
- -18.9
- Significance
- culture?
- Context
- excavated from the so-called muck layer
- Associated taxa
- Mammalia: Rangifer tarandus
- Additional information
- The bones included two mandibles, cervical 8, ulna, 2 radii, scapula, femur, calcaneus, and 4 metatarsal fragments.
- Comments
- NiVk-1, Engigstciak, comment by R. McGhee: NiVk-1:341 is one in a small series of billet-like objects found in assemblage contexts interpreted by R.S. MacNeish (1956a) as related to both the Denbigh complex (ASTt) and the Norton tradition. This cylindrically-shaped object bears scars suggestive of its use as a flaking or flint-knapping hammer. The very heavy and dense bone with no cancellous tissue is almost certainly sea mammal bone (probably walrus mandible or baculum). There is no information on the 14C content of the Beaufort Sea marine reservoir. However for forty modern samples from arctic and subarctic marine reservoirs, Stuiver et al. (1986) list apparent ages ranging from 370 to 893 years with a mean of 554 years. We may expect that the date acquired on this sample is a few centuries older than a date which would be obtained from the atmospheric reservoir. Comment by J. Cinq-Mars: the available provenience data indicate at this time that NiVk-1: 341 belongs to artifact series attributable to MacNeish's (1956a) Firth River Cordmarked (Denbigh-like) or to the Firth River Dentate (Norton-like) complexes. The date itself, with or without the afore-mentioned correction, falls squarely into the presently known Denbigh or ASTt sequence (see Dumond 1984) indicating that the specimen is more likely to be associated with the Cordmarked complex, or possibly with the preceding New Mountain phase. It also indicates a relatively early ASTt presence in northwestern mainland Canada, and further suggests that data from Engigstciak may yet serve to elucidate the question of the eastward spread of this tradition from a western Alaskan homeland. Comments on RIDDL-281, 319, and 362: see Cinq-Mars, et al. 1991.