Batza Téna-Trail to Obsidian: Archaeology at an Alaskan Obsidian Source

Richard W. Parker is an assistant professor of classics at Brock
University in St. Catharines.

This book details the archaeological investigation of Northern
Alaska’s major source of obsidian, which was utilized by Native
peoples for some 11,000 years. That source, designated Batza Téna
(“Obsidian Trail”) in local Athapaskan parlance, lies on the Koyukuk
River in Northwestern Alaska, a river that crosses the probable
migration route from Asia into North America.

The outcrop at Batza Téna and the colluvium of the Indian and Little
Indian Rivers, tributaries of the Koyukuk, provide obsidian, or volcanic
glass, which is easily flaked and can be worked into sharp edges. Native
knappers sought out the prized material and removed it from the source
to flaking stations, usually a kilometre or more from the primary
source. There the obsidian was knapped, usually into blanks or roughouts
pending future refinement.

The investigators have examined some 100 of these flaking stations, and
have identified a number of campsites. Out of the mass of artifacts,
particularly the assemblages from several of the campsites, it has been
possible tentatively to construct a sequence of occupation. The book is
organized along the lines of this sequence, with discussion of sites
representing the several chronological members of the sequence
concentrated into separate chapters.

Of particular interest are the discussions of sites where fluted-points
were collected and microblade sites, as well as the implications of the
relationship and/or possible interaction between Paleo-Indian,
Paleo-Arctic, and Clovis cultures. The description of the evidence
(although “to a certain degree summary”) and the analysis of it will
exhaust all but the hardened professional.

As with other titles in the Mercury series, figures in the form of
maps, distribution schemata, tables, drawings, and photographs abound.
The quality of plates and drawings depicting lithic objects is superb. A
number of site photographs are a little dark, not surprisingly, and the
usefulness of some is limited.

This is a work of serious anthropological science. The style and degree
of technical discussion make it less accessible to the amateur than its
immediate predecessor in the Mercury series, Cybulski’s A Greenville
Burial Mound. It will be of very considerable interest to others in the
field.