The Dry Creek paleo-archaeology site located in the Nenana River Valley of central Alaska is one of the most important sites on Beringia, the land bridge between Siberia and Alaska that was open during the last Ice Age. From 1973 to 1977, Roger Powers, professor of anthropology at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, initiated a full-scale excavation of the site. At the time geomorphologists understood that the Bering Strait Land Bridge persisted from 40,000 to 10,000 years ago, but no evidence had yet been found, despite extensive searches, to prove that humans had moved from Siberia into Alaska across the bridge. At Dry Creek Powers discovered human remains that were radiocarbon dated to 12,970 years ago, the first evidence of humans in Alaska before the flooding of Beringia.
In 1983, Powers submitted a complete, detailed report of the dig to the Department of the Interior. Plans were well along for a book, but by then Powers had turned his attention to other sites, and he died in 2003 without publishing the book. Years later, two of his students decided to finish the project. The result is a first rate book detailing the four years of excavations at Dry Creek along with numerous photographs, maps, and illustrations. They also put the Dry Creek project in context of all the first American discoveries made since. It is a valuable addition to the literature on the peopling of the America and an important chapter in the history of that archaeological research.
