The Aleut region has the longest history of anthropological and archaeological investigations in all of Alaska. Although predating formal anthropological studies, the extensive ethnographic account by the Russian Orthodox priest Ivan Veniaminov in the early 1800s laid a solid foundation for scientific archaeological and anthropological investigations over the next 100 years, including those by William Healy Dall in the 1870s, Waldemar Jochelson from 1909 to 1910, and Aleš Hrdlička in the 1930s. Following World War II, research continued, and the evolving political picture in Alaska gave Aleut people increasing influence and control over such efforts.

The eastern Aleutian prehistoric archaeological sequence is key for understanding population movements, cultural exchanges, and adaptations to environmental changes over a wide area of the north Pacific and Bering Sea during the Holocene. An important question is, Can the settlement history of the eastern Aleutians be understood as a single continuous tradition lasting some 9,000 years, or were there major population and cultural influxes along with periods of widespread population abandonment? We review the available archaeological evidence with reference to recent mtDNA and nucleic DNA studies of prehistoric and contemporary Arctic and Subarctic populations and conclude that the evidence points to an overall cultural continuity with notable incursions and excursions of people and cultural elements into and out of the eastern Aleutians.

The material evidence from sites across the Aleutian Islands reflects colonization events, subsequent adaptations, and influxes of ideas and/or people from the east. The occurrence in the eastern Aleutians of bifacial technology around 7000 BP, of artifacts similar to the Arctic Small Tool tradition between 4000 and 3500 BP, and of slate and jet objects around 1000 BP reflects repeated surges of influence or movement of peoples from further east into the eastern end of the chain. In the central and western Aleutians, influence or perhaps colonization from east of the Aleutians is also marked by the occurrence of bifacial technology about 6500 BP and the appearance of slate artifacts after 1000 BP, suggesting the movement of ideas or people from further east. Basic trends across the archipelago include a decrease in formal chipped-stone tools, an increase in the use and the complexity of bone technology, and the increase in use and variety of ground-stone tools. In addition, increasing village site sizes and denser midden deposits are seen later in time throughout the archipelago. The similarity in sites and assemblages, albeit with regional variations, reflects trends that are seen across the chain and indicates that these island communities were not isolated from one another or from mainland Alaska.

The Aleut language, currently spoken along the Aleutian chain and the Pribilof and Commander islands, is the only language in its branch of the Eskimo-Aleut language family, and traditional methods of linguistic reconstruction have neither satisfactorily explained its relationship with languages on the Asian continent nor its development from Proto-Eskimo-Aleut. Linguistic reconstruction has always been important in understanding the prehistory and history of the Aleuts, and new approaches in comparative linguistics, more comprehensive information on typological features of neighboring languages, and continuing language documentation allow us to propose a rich and continuous history of contact with various groups of people. I evaluate evidence that the Aleut language may have been shaped by contact with neighbors in Asia and Alaska, eventually giving rise to its differentiation from the Eskimo languages. I look at dialect differentiation along the Aleutian chain and what this differentiation reveals about the migration trends of the Aleut along the chain. I look at the colonial expansion of the Aleut-speaking area and resulting additional varieties of Aleut in the historical period. Finally, I review the effects of the Russian and American colonial periods on the Aleut language and the severe endangerment that the language faces today as a result. I conclude that there is evidence of possible Aleut contact with both neighboring peoples; however, much of this evidence has not yet been subjected to systematic comparative reconstructions. Linguistic evidence supports theories of at least two westward expansions of Aleuts along the island chain, but it is not yet clear what motivated the dialect differentiations. Finally, I offer some thoughts on directions for future dialect studies and the continuing documentation of Aleut.

Historical, economic, and political influences on Aleut demography and social organization are considered in relation to an apparent deficit of Aleut males in the early 20th century. Ethnohistoric records detail persistent waves of explorers, fur hunters, missionaries, bureaucrats, and foreign fishermen coming to the Aleutian region for economic exploitation, with some making it their home. The first major wave consisted of Russian and Siberian crews in pursuit of sea otters and fur seals. These entrepreneurs moved Aleut men to hunting grounds and replaced a large portion of them in the villages. The second wave consisted of Scandinavian and other European immigrants who followed cod, halibut, and herring fisheries and who married into eastern Aleut villages. These movements resulted in two genealogical deficits of Aleut men with concomitant shifts in social organization and economic emphases that contribute to the modern diversity of Aleut society. Aleut evacuation during World War II exacerbated these sex imbalances in the villages of the western Aleutian and Pribilof islands.

Purified bone collagen from a small suite of human remains recovered at three sites on the Alaska Peninsula (Port Moller, Brooks River, and Mink Island) were analyzed for stable carbon and nitrogen isotope chemistry and were accelerator radiocarbon dated. Because samples sizes were small and faunal isotope chemistry lacking, results should be considered preliminary. However, these data indicate that each locality was represented by a somewhat different suite of subsistence strategies and covered a distinct temporal span. Port Moller burials (n = 7) from the Hot Springs site date to a calibrated 2σ range of 3547–1388 BP. Although marine foods clearly made the greatest contribution to these diets, individuals were not as heavily reliant on high-trophic-level marine taxa as eastern Aleutian groups to the west, given their intake of salmon and evidence of caribou hunting. Brooks River burials (n = 9) expressed an inland foraging focus with significant reliance on caribou and spawning salmon and covered a calibrated 2σ range of 1484–381 BP. In contrast, individuals from Mink Island (n = 7), dating to cal. 666–292 BP, were heavily reliant on high-trophic-level marine prey similar to but not as enriched isotopically as the Aleut, perhaps a consequence of limited access to caribou and greater reliance on invertebrates. This pattern suggests that prehistoric economic strategies on the Alaska Peninsula were diverse, characterized by fine-tuned adaptations to local ecological settings, perhaps mediated by ethnic factors and territorial and social pressures.

Several hypotheses have been put forward about the origins and evolution of the inhabitants of the Aleutian Islands. Both Hrdlička [The Aleutian and Commander Islands and Their Inhabitants (Philadelphia: Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology, 1945)] and Laughlin [“The Alaska gateway viewed from the Aleutian Islands,” in Papers on the Physical Anthropology of the American Indian, W. S. Laughlin, ed. (New York: Viking Fund, 1951), 98–126] analyzed cranial morphology and came to somewhat different conclusions using a typological approach and limited analytical methods. Subsequent investigations using morphological data have not significantly improved our understanding of Aleut prehistory. More recently, radiocarbon dating and mitochondrial DNA analyses have shed light on Aleut genetic variation and changes over time, but better morphological methods using multivariate statistical analysis have not yet been used. We analyzed craniometric data using multivariate procedures and found that Aleuts demonstrate significant changes in cranial morphology over time, and these changes correspond to Hrdlička's observations but may not necessarily reflect in-migration. The morphological changes were concentrated in the very aspects of morphology that are easily observable and that Hrdlička most often measured, namely, cranial length, breadth, and height, but they were obscured when craniometric variation as a whole was analyzed. Also, we found that the morphological changes over time were not related to the changes in haplogroup frequencies over time, suggesting that migration into the Aleutians did not play a significant role in producing the morphological changes. However, craniometric variability apparently increases over time, suggesting in-migration, localized selection, and/or greater environmental heterogeneity. Our results contradict Laughlin's observations but may be more in line with his hypothesis of in situ evolutionary changes absent gene flow. In addition to selection, gene flow, and gene drift, however, sociocultural changes must also be considered as a factor in why morphology changed over time.

Recent research indicates that anthropometrics can be used to study microevolutionary forces acting on humans. We examine the use of morphological traits in reconstructing the population history of Aleuts and Eskimos of the Bering Sea. From 1979 to 1981, W. S. Laughlin measured a sample of St. Lawrence Island Eskimos and Pribilof Island Aleuts. These samples included adult participants from St. George and St. Paul in the Pribilof Islands and from Gambell and Savoonga on St. Lawrence Island. The Relethford-Blangero method was used to examine the phylogenetic relationship between Aleuts and Eskimos. Anthropometric measurements for Native North Americans (measured by Boas and a team of trained anthropometrists in 1890–1904) and Native Mesoamericans (compiled from the literature for 1898–1952) were used for comparison. A principal components analysis of means for measurements and a neighbor-joining tree were constructed using Euclidean distances. All these tests revealed the same strong relationship among the focus populations. The R matrix from the Relethford-Blangero method clusters Aleuts and Eskimos separately and accounts for 97.3% of the variation in the data. Phenotypic variation within the population is minimal and therefore minimum F_ST values are low. Genetic distances were compared to a Euclidean distance matrix of anthropometric measurements using a Mantel test and gave a high but not significant correlation. Our results provide evidence of a close phylogenetic relationship between Aleut and Eskimo populations in the Bering Sea. However, it is apparent that history has affected the relationship among the populations. Despite previous findings of higher European admixture in Gambell (based on blood group markers) than in Savoonga, Savoonga has greater within-group variation in anthropometric measurements. Anthropometrics reveal a close relationship between Gambell and St. Paul as a result of European admixture. The St. George population was the most divergent of the populations, indicating that it diverged from the Eskimos and St. Paul because of the compounding effects of genetic drift and limited European gene flow. These findings are in agreement with previous anthropometric and genetic studies of the Aleut and Eskimo populations and support the utility of anthropometrics in inferring population history and structure.

The Aleutian Islands were colonized, perhaps several times, from the Alaskan mainland. Earlier work documented transitions in the relative frequencies of mtDNA haplogroups over time, but little is known about potential source populations for prehistoric Aleut migrants. As part of a pilot investigation, we sequenced the mtDNA first hypervariable region (HVRI) in samples from two archaeological sites on the Alaska Peninsula (the Hot Springs site near Port Moller, Alaska; and samples from a cluster of sites in the Brooks River area near Katmai National Park and Preserve) and one site from Prince William Sound (Mink Island). The sequences revealed not only the mtDNA haplogroups typically found in both ancient and modern Aleut populations (A2 and D2) but also haplogroups B2 and D1 in the Brooks River samples and haplogroup D3 in one Mink Islander. These preliminary results suggest greater mtDNA diversity in prehistoric populations than previously observed and facilitate reconstruction of migration scenarios from the peninsula into the Aleutian archipelago in the past.

We summarize the results of a field and laboratory research program (1999–2006) in the Aleutian Islands on the origins of the inhabitants of the archipelago and the genetic structure of these populations. The Aleuts show closest genetic affinity to the contemporary Siberian Eskimos and Chukchi of Chukotka and differ significantly from the populations of Kamchatka (the terminus of the archipelago) and Alaskan Eskimos. Our findings support the hypothesis that the ancestors of the Aleuts crossed Beringia and expanded westerly into the islands approximately 9,000 years ago. The Monmonier algorithm indicates genetic discontinuity between contemporary Kamchatkan populations and western Aleut populations, suggesting that island hopping from Kamchatka into the western Aleutian Islands was highly unlikely. The primary determinant of the distribution of genes throughout the archipelago is geography. The most intimate relationship exists between the genetics (based on mtDNA sequences and intermatch/mismatch distances) and geographic distances (measured in kilometers). However, the Y-chromosome haplogroup frequencies are not significantly correlated with the geography of the Aleutian Islands. The underlying patterns of precontact genetic structure based on Y-chromosome markers of the Aleut populations is obscured because of the gene flow from Russian male colonizers and Scandinavian and English fishermen. We consider alternative theories about the peopling of the Americas from Siberia. In addition, we attempt a synthesis between archaeological and genetic data for the Aleutian Islands.

The fishing community of Bering Island, located in the Russian Commander Islands off the Kamchatka Peninsula, was originally founded by a small number of Russian soldiers and merchants, along with Aleuts forcibly relocated from the western region of the Aleutian archipelago. The purpose of this study is to characterize the genetic variation of Bering Island inhabitants for autosomal, mitochondrial, and Y-chromosome DNA and classic genetic markers and to investigate the genetic impact of the 19th-century founding and subsequent demographic events on this heterogeneous community. Our results show a loss of diversity among maternal lineages in the Bering Aleut population, with fixation of mtDNA haplogroup D, as revealed by median-joining network analysis and mismatch differences. Conversely, paternal haplotypes exhibit an increase in diversity and the presence of a substantial number of non-Native lineages. Admixture results, based on autosomal STR data, indicate that parental contributions to the mixed Aleut population of Bering are approximately 60% Aleut and 40% Russian. Classic genetic markers show affinities between the Bering Island Aleuts and the other historically founded Aleut communities of St. Paul and St. George in the Pribilof Islands, Alaska. This study demonstrates that the opposing evolutionary forces of genetic drift and gene flow acted on the maternal and paternal lineages, respectively, to shape the genetic structure of the present-day inhabitants of Bering Island.

We typed a subset of the Aleut population for HLA loci (HLA-A, HLA-B, HLA-DRB1, HLA-DQB1) to obtain an HLA profile, which was compared to other Eurasian and Amerindian populations for studying Aleut origin and its significance on the peopling of the Americas. Allele frequencies at the four loci were identified in an Aleut sample using standard indirect DNA sequencing methods. Genetic distances with Amerindians and Eurasians were obtained by comparing Aleut allele frequencies with a worldwide population database (13,164 chromosomes). The most frequently extended HLA haplotypes were also calculated. We also generated Aleut relatedness dendrograms and calculated correspondence relatedness in a multidimensional scale. Both neighbor-joining dendrograms and correspondence analysis separated Aleuts from Eskimos and Amerindians. Aleuts are closer genetically to Europeans, including Scandinavians and English. Our results are concordant with those obtained by Y-chromosome analysis, suggesting that most male Aleut ancestors of our sample came mainly from Europe.

We examine surname distribution, origin, and association with Y-chromosome haplogroups in native communities from the Aleutian archipelago. The underlying hypothesis is that surnames and Y-chromosome haplogroups should be associated because both are paternally inherited markers. We used Lasker's coefficient of relationship through isonymy (R_ib) to identify the distribution of 143 surnames in the Aleutian Islands. The geographic distribution of surnames was explored both through frequency distribution and through the use of Mantel tests. Multidimensional scaling, chi-square, and Mantel tests were used to examine the relationship between surname and Y-chromosome markers. Overall, we observed that the distribution of surnames in the Aleutian archipelago is culturally driven rather than being one of paternal inheritance. Surnames follow a gradient from east to west, with high frequencies of Russian surnames found in western Aleut communities and high levels of non-Russian surnames found in eastern Aleut communities. A nonsignificant correlation (r = -0.0132; P = 0.436) was found between distance matrices based on haplogroups of the nonrecombining portion of the Y chromosome and surnames, although an association was found between non-Russian surnames and the predominantly non-Russian haplogroups (R1b, I1a, and I).

Academic research focusing on the population and culture history of the Aleut (Unangan) people began in the late 19th century and continues to the present. The papers in this special issue of Human Biology summarize the latest results from archaeological, linguistic, genetic, and morphometric research approaches that bear on our current understanding of Unangan history and prehistory. Although these new analyses have provided a level of description and resolution previously unattainable, explanatory models and mechanisms for the patterned variation observed over time in the biological and cultural record of the Aleutian region remains elusive. Bringing the diverse data sets into concordance to represent an integrated synthesis of Aleut population and culture history and of Unangan origins and their relationships with other groups in the region remains a goal for future investigators.