Variations on a Theme: Comparison of Precolonial Iñupiaq Cultural Landscapes Through Subsistence Strategies at Cape Espenberg, Alaska
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Animals are key actors in Inuit lifeways and provide insights into cultural landscape use. We present the analysis of faunal assemblages at one site at Cape Espenberg to compare the use of animal resources from two adjacent house features occupied within 10 to 80 years by occupants of two cultural groups, the Birnirk and the Thule. Using a social zooarchaeological framework, we assess site formation processes, taphonomic factors, modification frequencies, taxonomic composition, and elemental survivorship to interpret the use of animals around 800 to 700 years ago. Although their subsistence resources are broadly similar due to low faunal biodiversity, the two groups focused on different procurement strategies, with Birnirk people acquiring whales, while the Thule people relied on local marine resources such as small seals and walrus. Acknowledging that other houses participated in both communities, we situate these results within the larger cultural landscapes to conclude that these two groups employed social interactions in different ways, leading to differential acquisition of faunal resources. These results provide the first analysis of animal use for Birnirk people in over 40 years, providing new interpretations of human-environment interactions for ancestral Inuit/Iñupiat groups.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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".