This is the way: Knowledge networks and toolkit specialization in the circumpolar coastal landscapes of western Alaska and Tierra del Fuego

One relevant dimension through which human populations articulate their occupation of the landscape involves the accumulation and interpersonal transmission of information pertaining to the spatio-temporal distribution, accessibility, and desirability of resources. The high productivity and resource diversity of coastal circumpolar landscapes enables them to sustain larger hunter-gatherer populations throughout the year. In circumpolar landscapes, marine mammals are a particularly highly ranked resource, as major sources of essential fats, proteins, and other nutrients. The adoption of specialized toolkits for marine mammal exploitation in open waters, encompassing watercraft and detachable harpoons, would have ensured that marine mammal hunting was a particularly rewarding and predictable endeavor. The first consistent adoption of toggling harpoons in southwestern Alaska is documented primarily at the height of the cold Neoglacial (ca. 4500-2500 BP), mirroring trends along the western Bering Sea coast. While maritime resource exploitation in northwestern Alaska also appears to have begun during the Neoglacial-particularly in the Kotzebue Sound area-specialized technological adaptations reflecting full-time maritime adaptations became more prominent in the wider region during the subsequent warmer period, in the context of population growth and increasing social connectivity. In contrast, the appearance of detachable harpoons at sites in the Beagle Channel (southern Tierra del Fuego) does not appear to be associated with any significant climatic changes, developing locally around 6500 BP after an initial period of human settlement in the region which lacked such adaptations. Therefore, we argue that the pathways toward the adoption of specialized toolkits enabling a maritime-oriented subsistence strategy in circumpolar coastal environments emerged primarily as the outcome of the consolidation of knowledge networks derived from the habituation of hunter-gatherer-fisher communities to predictable ecological conditions during periods in which the coastal landscapes they inhabited had become relatively stable.

Automated summary

Human populations in circumpolar landscapes adapt to resource distribution and accessibility by accumulation and transmission of information, with marine mammals being crucial resources. Specialized toolkits for maritime hunting vary by region and historical period.