The Archaeology of Dogs at the Precontact Site of Nunalleq, Western Alaska
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Historically and ethnographically dogs have played a prominent role in the lifeways and lifeworlds of many Arctic and sub-Arctic peoples, and are considered to be a vital aspect of adaptation to living in these regions. Excavations at the precontact site of Nunalleq in the Yukon-Kuskokwim (Y-K) Delta in coastal Western Alaska have uncovered a significant proportion of dog bones among the faunal assemblage. The presence of discontinuous permafrost at the site has resulted in the excellent preservation, not only of bone, but also of dog fur and even dog lice in deposits at the site, along with vast organic and inorganic material culture assemblages. Here we present a multi-stranded, cross-disciplinary study of the bioarchaeology and zooarchaeology of dogs at Nunalleq, combining their remains, with the study of material culture, soils and other bodies of evidence, and the ethno-historic record. We go “beyond domestication” and examine the utilitarian role of dogs at Nunalleq, the role in foodways, and in social and symbolic space at the site, providing new insights into this vital aspect of Precontact animal-human relationships in the Y-K Delta.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".