The Anchorage Daily News has a surprisingly good story about archaeologists working at an important site in Alaska’s Brooks Range. The video, in particular, I think, helps explain why archaeologists put up with all the hardships: bugs, dirt, awful weather, dangerous animals, and everything else that sometimes makes like less than pleasant. In the words of physicist Richard Feynman, it’s for the pleasure of finding things out.
One very interesting finding mentioned in this story is that the one example of a fluted projectile point found at this site came from a level younger than similar points found elsewhere in North America. This suggests that fluted points were invented in more southern regions and then spread north. This agrees with the suggesting made in American Antiquity last year by Charlotte Beck and George T Jones that fluted points originated in either the Southeast or the southern plains at a time when the inhabitants of the Intermountain West were using a completely different style of point.
