The volume under review is about the Dry Creek site (Nenana River basin, central Alaska), one of the most important objects of multidisciplinary studies on the North American side of Beringia—the former landmass which connected Asia and the Americas in the Pleistocene, until ca. 11,000 BP (e.g. Hoffecker and Elias Reference Hoffecker and Elias2007). Even today, more than 40 years after its discovery in 1973, Dry Creek is the second oldest Pleistocene archaeological object in Alaska (e.g. Bever Reference Bever2006; Potter Reference Potter2008). The clear stratigraphic situation and the application of multiple geoarchaeological methods made it the key Paleoindian site in North America. This book is a long-awaited full report of the investigations conducted at the Dry Creek in the 1970s; previously, only a handful of published sources was available (e.g. Thorson and Hamilton Reference Thorson and Hamilton1977; Powers and Hoffecker Reference Powers and Hoffecker1989; Bigelow and Powers Reference Bigelow and Powers1994). The main focus of this review is the chronology (uncalibrated ¹⁴C dates are used throughout this text) and stratigraphy of the Dry Creek site.

The volume consists of a Preface (p ix–xi) written by T Goebel, and two parts (plus references cited, list of contributors, and an Index). Part 1 (chapters 1–7, p 2–214), authored by WR Powers, RG Guthrie and JF Hoffecker, is the slightly revised site’s excavation report submitted to the US National Park Service in 1983 as a manuscript, and is now available for the first time as a published text with illustrations. Part 2, Chapter 8 (p 219–60), by KE Graf, LM DiPietro, K Krasinski, BJ Culleton, DJ Kennett, AK Gore and HL Smith, contains the results of the Dry Creek re-investigation conducted in 2011 (see also Graf et al. Reference Graf, DiPietro, Krasinski, Gore, Smith, Culleton, Kennett and Rhode2015). Chapter 9 (p 261–88), by T Goebel and JF Hoffecker, summarizes the knowledge on the Dry Creek site in a wider perspective.

As concerns the archaeological aspect, despite the large amount of lithic materials unearthed at this site, it is still not very clear: “[the] Dry Creek excavations demonstrated that even within the late Pleistocene, there was much variability in Beringian lithic technologies and tools, variability that we still do not completely understand.” (p x). In brief, the oldest Component I contains 3558 artifacts, and their main types are bifacial knives; projectile points; side, transverse, and end scrapers; burins; flake tools; and cobble cores and tools (p 195). It represents the Nenana Complex initially described by Powers and Hoffecker (Reference Powers and Hoffecker1989); its distinct feature is the absence of microblades (p 196), although the presence of microblades at the older Alaskan site of Swan Point dated to at least ca. 12,300 BP (charcoal-based ¹⁴C value; e.g. Hirasawa and Holmes Reference Hirasawa and Holmes2017) makes the Paleoindian archaeology of Alaska quite diverse. The younger Component II has a very large collection of 28,881 lithic items. Two main assemblages are distinguished: one with microblades, and another without them (p 195). As for the former, numerous microblades and microblade wedge-shaped cores, bifacial knives, core-scrapers, core-burins, and blade-like flakes are identified (p 195). With regard to the latter, burins, crude bifacial implements, shaped scrapers, and projectile-point bases are the most typical artifacts (p 195). The microblade-bearing assemblage of Component II is associated with the Denali Complex (p 105). The youngest Component IV (with 2372 artifacts recovered) belongs to the Holocene, ca. 5000–3000 BP, and contains artifacts associated with the Northern Archaic Tradition (p 203–14).

In terms of Dry Creek chronology, Component I was initially ¹⁴C-dated to ca. 11,120 BP, thus making it the oldest archaeological site in Alaska as of the late 1970s (see Thorson and Hamilton Reference Thorson and Hamilton1977). Additional small-scale investigations in 2011 (see Graf et al. Reference Graf, DiPietro, Krasinski, Gore, Smith, Culleton, Kennett and Rhode2015) allowed the collection of more samples, and the results generated on hearth charcoal show an even older age of Component I: ca. 11,635–11,510 BP (p 242). As for Component II, the first ¹⁴C date on charcoal collected from the hearth—10,690 ± 250 BP (SI-1561)—was obtained in 1973, soon after the discovery of the site (p 13). This gave archaeologists the assurance that they were dealing with a Paleoindian site, and the investigations were carried out at full scale thereafter. The 2011 excavations and sampling (also hearth charcoal) resulted in more ¹⁴C dates: ca. 9480–9460 BP (p 240). They are somewhat younger than the ¹⁴C value of ca. 10,690 BP, but if we take into account that each cultural component reflects multiple human visits/occupation episodes (see below), this should not be surprising. The new ¹⁴C dates fit the general age-depth relationship at Dry Creek (p 18).

The issue of widespread ¹⁴C ages for components I and II deserves attention. It is concluded that the site represents a “temporary hunting camp, or ‘spike camp’, by early people.” (p 5; see also p 146). In this case, one should expect a variation of ¹⁴C dates within at least several hundred years in a single stratigraphic component, as it was suggested previously (Kuzmin and Keates Reference Kuzmin and Keates2005). One can clearly see this pattern for components I–II of the Dry Creek site, and it is not necessary to reject the ¹⁴C value of ca. 11,120 BP from Component I and incline to its older age, ca. 11,600 BP (p 269).

Another issue is the presence of several ¹⁴C age outliers in paleosols 2–3 (between components I and II); the ¹⁴C dates ranging from ca. 23,930 BP to ca. 9340–7985 BP are very different from the values obtained on charcoal collected in the occupation levels (p 34–6). A possible explanation for this is contamination by airborne fossil coal dust, although this conclusion is still of a tentative nature (p 36).

Some of the cultural correlations between the Dry Creek site (and Alaska in general), the neighboring region of Kamchatka in the former Beringia, and the Paleoindian Clovis Complex as presented in Chapter 8 require some comments. It is stated that the Layer 7 of the Ushki site cluster on Kamchatka is contemporaneous with Component I of Dry Creek (p 259). However, the extensive ¹⁴C dating of Ushki’s Layer 7 shows that it existed from ca. 14,300–13,600 BP to ca. 11,320–11,060 BP (e.g. Kuzmin and Dikova Reference Kuzmin and Dikova2014; Kuzmin et al. Reference Kuzmin, Dikova and Cruz2010), and therefore covered a longer time span than the Dry Creek’s Component I; this opinion by Y Kuzmin and his co-authors is somehow ignored in Chapter 8. As for ¹⁴C dating of the Clovis Complex, the authors prefer the “short chronology” (p 260) based on the work by Waters and Stafford (Reference Waters and Stafford2007) who determined its age as ca. 11,050–10,800 BP. This opinion does not take into account the vast corpus of ¹⁴C dates associated with the Clovis Complex in the interval of ca. 11,570–10,900 BP (e.g. Taylor et al. Reference Taylor, Haynes and Stuiver1996; Haynes Reference Haynes2002; Bever Reference Bever2006). Component I of Dry Creek is therefore contemporaneous with Clovis, contra to the authors who state that “new mid-Allerød-aged dates from Dry Creek now make it a pre-Clovis site” (p 260).

Finally, this book is a nice tribute to William Roger Powers (1942–2003), one of the first Western scholars who introduced the Siberian Paleolithic to the international scientific community (see Powers Reference Powers1973). With Dry Creek on the North American side of the Bering Strait, Powers in the 1970s “stood” on both sides of Beringia!

The writing of this review was supported by the Tomsk State University Competitiveness Improvement Program.