Norton tradition
The Norton tradition is an archaeological culture that developed in the Western Arctic along the Alaskan shore of the Bering Strait around 1000 BC and lasted through about 800 AD. The Norton people used flake-stone tools like their predecessors, the Arctic small tool tradition, but they were more marine-oriented and brought new technologies such as oil-burning lamps and clay vessels into use. Norton people used both marine and land resources as part of their subsistence strategy. They hunted caribou and smaller mammals as well as salmon and larger sea mammals. Their settlements were occupied fairly permanently, as is evidenced by village sites which contain substantial dwellings. During summer months, small camps may have been used as temporary hunting and fishing locations, but the main dwelling place was maintained and returned to at the end of the hunting season. In about 700 BC, the Norton inhabitants of the St. Lawrence and other Bering Strait Islands developed an even more specialized culture, based entirely on the ocean, called the Thule tradition. Stages The Norton tradition is divided into three stages of development. The first, the Choris Stage (ca. 1600—500 BC), consists of coastal sites mostly in northwest Alaska containing fiber-tempered pottery with