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Large canids (wolves, dogs, and coyote) and people form a close relationship in northern (subarctic and arctic) socioecological systems. Here, we document the antiquity of this bond and the multiple ways it manifested in interior Alaska, a region key to understanding the peopling of the Americas and early northern lifeways. We compile original and existing genomic, isotopic, and osteological canid data from archaeological, paleontological, and modern sites. Results show that in contrast to canids recovered in non-anthropic contexts, canids recovered in association with human occupations are markedly diverse. They include multiple species and intraspecific lineages, morphological variation, and diets ranging from terrestrial to marine. This variation is expressed along both geographic and temporal gradients, starting in the terminal Pleistocene with canids showing high marine dietary estimates. This paper provides evidence of the multiple ecological relationships between canids and people in the north—from predation, probable commensalism, and taming, to domestication—and of their early onset. 

Woolly mammoths in mainland Alaska overlapped with the region’s first people for at least a millennium. However, it is unclear how mammoths used the space shared with people. Here, we use detailed isotopic analyses of a female mammoth tusk found in a 14,000-year-old archaeological site to show that she moved ~1000 kilometers from northwestern Canada to inhabit an area with the highest density of early archaeological sites in interior Alaska until her death. DNA from the tusk and other local contemporaneous archaeological mammoth remains revealed that multiple mammoth herds congregated in this region. Early Alaskans seem to have structured their settlements partly based on mammoth prevalence and made use of mammoths for raw materials and likely food.