GEOLOGY OF THE ENGIGSTCIAK ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE, YUKON TERRITORY

F OR some years students of human history have hoped and expected to find a record of human occupation in the Arctic of western Canada and Alaska comparable in antiquity to the now rather numerous “Early Man ” sites of the central and southwestern United States. The Engigstciak site (discovered by MacNeish in 1954) near the mouth of the Firth River, Yukon Territory, Canada (Fig. l), appears to contain such a record in the form of typologically old-looking flint artifacts intimately associated with the bones of extinct animals. The rich artifact assemblage also includes objects assignable on typological grounds to much later cultures, some of which are already well known in other parts of the Arctic. It is clear that the site has been occupied repeatedly throughout much of post-glacial time. Unfortunately, the natural processes of soil movements of an arctic climate, acting upon especially frost-susceptible sediments, has almost completely destroyed the original stratigraphic relationships in some parts of the archaeological site. In a few places there has been an intimate mixin