The earliest occupation of Canada’s subarctic was in the Bluefish Caves, northern Yukon, while older Old Crow, Yukon, Pleistocene exposures are secondary depositions (Figure 1). Bluefish Caves were used sporadically by a few hunters from 25 000 to 12 000 years ago. Possibly humanly altered mammoth bone in the Old Crow area is two-three times older than that in the 12 000-year-old non-microblade Nenana complex in Alaska. Microblades and their cores, and burins and their sharpening spalls (see Glossary) found at Bluefish Caves resemble those in the more recent 10 500 year-old Denali complex in Alaska and are also reminiscent of similar artifacts in Siberia’s Dyuktai culture. Whether the microtools in Bluefish Caves are associated with the earliest occupation is controversial. If they are, they may be tied to interior Alaska’s 11 000 year-old Healy Lake and 14 000year-old Swan Lake microblade sites.
Microblade-using cultures existed from central Siberia to eastern Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories, their Siberian ancestors reaching central
Alaska 14 000 years ago, the southern Yukon and northern British Columbia before 6000 years ago, and the western Mackenzie District by 4500 years ago. Three cultural traditions (historical and technological), accounting for their presence and based on their use of microblades, have been proposed by archaeologists: Northwest Microblade, Northern Archaic, and Palaeo-arctic. The fact that different tool types exist within each tradition at different times and locations makes them awkward markers through which to coordinate cultural interpretations. This is shown in the overall archaeological sequence (Table 1) by the absence of firm dividing lines or the use of hatched lines.
In the northern Yukon at a time later than microblade cultures, archaeological sites along the Porcupine River show greater affinity with southwest Yukon than with central Alaska. Ancestral Gwich’in stratified sites are Rat Indian Creek, Old Chief and Klo-Kut. Lithics include whetstones, maulheads, hammers, notched and contracting stemmed small Klo-Kut or Kavik arrowheads (so named from two northern sites where they have been found; see Figure 2a), adze-blades, axheads, boiling stones, scrapers (Figure 2c), and wedges. Bifacial stone tools (shaped on their two faces or sides) were less common in later phases when more bone and antler tool manufacturing took place (Figure 2).
Rat Indian Creek is one of the Yukon’s best-controlled excavations, with 17 radiocarbon dates in seven levels spanning 2430 ± 60 years ago to White Contact. Early and late uses of boulder spalls, chitho scrapers (Figure 2d) and bone, antler and pebble cores are similar, but bifacial chert tools decrease and scrapers and cores change 1200 years ago. The level 6/6A components lack burins but correlate with many sites in western and central Alaska and the pre-800year-old Taye Lake phase in the southwest Yukon. It has similar points and bifaces to Aishihik. Its post-1220 year-old tools resemble those found in Alaska, southwest Yukon and northwest Mackenzie District.
The Old Chief sequence resembles that of Rat Indian Creek, with Klo-Kut contracting stemmed points appearing in the Old Chief phase 1300 years ago, indicating the adoption of the bow and arrow and suggesting continuity from the Old Chief phase to the Klo-Kut site. The latter is located just downriver at Old Crow. Klo-Kut, a Gwich’in spring caribou water-crossing site beginning 1700 years ago, includes artifacts like those in the upper levels of Rat Indian Creek and continues the Dene sequence forward to White Contact in the 1800s. Continuity within the archaeological sequence in Porcupine River sites supports a hypothesis of in situ development. Ancestral Gwich’in adopted their bifacial stone technology and contracting stem Klo-Kut (Kavik) arrowheads from Alaskan tribes, the Klo-Kut arrowhead being an excellent marker for tracing Dene to the southwest Yukon and to the Interior Plateau of British Columbia.
Some archaeologists tie Yukon Dene outmigration with land temporarily affected by 1200 year-old White River ashfall from a nearby Alaskan volcano, an event concurrent with the Tanana-Gwich’in language split. But the ashfall never reached the Porcupine Gwich’in, and would not have affected their movement.
Indications of heavy pre - and post-Contact fishing exist at the nearby Dechyoo Njit camp. There, Dene used long, round-fronted snowshoes for hunting on fresh snow and short, pointed, upturned snowshoes for breaking trails. Subsistence came from ice fishing and hare - and ptarmigan-snaring in late winter, and hunting for porcupine, spruce grouse, caribou, and moose. In the far northwest, the Gwich’in hunted the Porcupine caribou herd in spring and summer, and sub-herds and other animals in winter. They extensively used wooden caribou fences, but only mid-Contact period fence remains have survived. A Black Fox Creek fence had protohistoric stone-adze-cut stumps, but older ones are inferred because 8000 years of stable spruce forest-tundra may have allowed stable caribou migration routes and provided wood for fence construction. For this, two long rows of poles, oriented transversely across low valleys, converged in a brush corral interlaced with rawhide snares where 80-150 caribou were trapped and killed with arrows and lances.
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