Alaska Natives and Mammoths: Enduring Cultural Relevance of Extinct Megafauna

Abstract Interactions between Native North Americans and extinct megafauna—including proboscideans (mammoths, mastodons, and gomphotheres)—tend to be portrayed only as predatory and only during a short period at the very end of the Pleistocene. In this article, we review the evidence of interaction between mammoths and Alaska Natives in subarctic/arctic North America to discuss how mammoths have held larger cultural significance both during the period of coexistence and after mammoth extirpation. Combined archaeological, ethnographic, and linguistic data show the continuous engagement of Alaska Natives with mammoths, with key periods of interactions occurring both prior and after their extirpation, particularly in interior Alaska at the end of the Pleistocene and in western/northern Alaska at the end of the Holocene. Alaska Natives have used mammoths as food but mostly as raw material, and both types of products have been imbued with strong symbolic meaning that reflects the cosmological status of mammoths in Alaska Native cultures. The Alaskan record provides insights through which to understand culturally complex interactions between Native Americans and proboscideans, and more broadly, currently extinct megafauna.