Exploring Early Cooking Traditions in Arctic North America via Targeted Excavations and Molecular Methods

During the summer of 2022, a University of Wyoming research team identified a significant cooking feature in a Late Pleistocene component of the Bachner Site, central Alaska. This component, radiocarbon dated to approximately 13,100 cal BP, contains well-preserved fauna from various small and large game and fatty acids that can be used to refine dietary reconstructions of the first Alaskans. The feature, F22-9, contains fine-grained cryptocrystalline silicates that have evidence of heat treatment, identifiable plant remains, and fire-cracked schist and quartz. Research on the portion of the cooking feature that was excavated in 2022 strongly suggests that it is among the earliest hot rock cooking features in the Americas and offers molecular evidence for fishing that would be the earliest documented in the region if not the continent. This has implications for subsistence, mobility, and social organization among the first Alaskans that may in turn provide insight into the origins and colonization routes of the first Americans. Additionally, the early importance of fish suggested by this feature has the potential to refine ecological models and contemporary land management strategies. Future research at the site will build on these initial conclusions to provide additional hearth materials, micromorphology, and subsistence interpretations based on traditional knowledge.