title

Traces of hunters on Eastern Arctic islands in ancient times. Part 2

author(s)

Vasyl Prydatko-Dolin (orcid: 0000-0002-0128-4928)

affiliation

National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine)

bibliography

Theriologia Ukrainica. 2025. Vol. 29: 165–188.

DOI

language

Ukrainian, with English summary, titles of tables, captures to figs

abstract

The article presents improved, cartographically processed materials from Part 1, supplemented with the latest remote sensing data (WV02...WV04, GE1), covering up to 150 locations. The analysis includes descriptions of over 80 locations related to the pioneer hunters of the Eastern Arctic islands who reached Kolyuchin, Wrangel, and Herald in ~2000 BC to the early 20th century. Clarifications have been made regarding certain locations described by other authors on the Bear Islands in the 18th–19th centuries. The larger the island, the less likely these locations would be in its central part. Pioneer hunters preyed mainly on marine and semi-marine mammals, whose presence probably enabled humans to advance and settle so far north, including Beringia. It has been shown that during the 19th and 20th centuries, many important artifacts were accidentally found by travellers and ended up on the mainland, where it was lost. The archaeological and historical hunting heritage of the inaccessible Eastern Arctic islands remains is underestimated and will likely continue to surprise us. There is reason to believe that ancient hunters appeared on Wrangel from the west and south-west rather than the east. In the western part of Wrangel, clusters of the locations were most likely present rather than isolated ones. Comparing data on the scale of mammal hunting during the era of the first foreign expeditions to Wrangel and the Soviet colonisation era reveals that the latter was far more intensive and not at all concerned with modern nature conservation. The colonists of Wrangel hunted hundreds of bears. Overlaying key e-locations on e‑maps of Beringia allow us to better see the trends. The palaeodrainage map of Beringia, relative to its part of Wrangel, can be supplemented. The oldest described locations on Wrangel could be reflections of the pioneer hunters retreat rather than their arrival. Animations based on palaeoclimatology and palaeobathymetry data suggest that ancient pioneer hunters appeared on the coast of future Wrangel from Siberia, more often than from Alaska. Additional evidence has been found in support of the existence of a rodent Semipalmatus sp. on Wrangel in ancient times.

keywords

ancient sites, hunters, Eastern Arctic, islands, GIS, RS, maps

references

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