A Palaeogeographic Preface to the Origins of Whaling: The Colder, The Better?

Owen K. Mason, Alaska Quaternary Center, University of Alaska Museum, PO Box 756960, Fairbanks, AK 99775-6960

Climatic deterministic models often over-simplify cultural process; nonetheless, successful whale hunting is constrained by climate-forcing both in its influence on whale demography and the development of ice leads that determine access to whales. Extensive archaeofaunas at Point Hope and Whale Alley indicate whaling intensified during the Little Ice Age. Is this relationship instrumental to the development of whaling? Geologic proxy records at 14 beach ridge of barrier island complexes, constrained by >275 calibrated 14C dates, allow the reconstruction of past climatic changes in northwest Alaska. Five major episodes of northwest Alaska storm erosion are widespread (a) 1600-1200 cal BC, (b) 800-2090 cal BC, (c) cal AD 750-950, (d) cal AD 1030-1200 and (e) AD 1450-1800; these co-occur with the expansion of whaling at East Cape and a widespread stormy internal and may be causally linked to adverse climatic conditions. A critical transition c. AD 900 during less stormy conditions also co-occurs with the rise or expansion of Punuk culture.