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

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—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.