"Many lithic analyses in recent decades have focused on the influence of lithic production techniques and artifact stages in the discard form of stone tools. Assemblage composition has also been seen to reflect production and reduction activities at landscape scales. This approach has not yet been applied to the archaeological record of the North, however, despite its usefulness in analyzing small-scale sites dominated by lithic materials. Middle Holocene artifact assemblages in Alaska have frequently been characterized by the presence or absence of notched projectile points and microblade technology and assigned to one of two major categories with differences interpreted in terms of culture history. Sites with notched projectile points but no microblades are thought to belong to the Northern Archaic (based on these levels at the Onion Portage site (Anderson 1968a, b)), while sites with notched projectile points and microblades are considered "Tuktu-like" (after the Tuktu-Naiyuk site at Anaktuvuk Pass (Campbell 1959)), with little consideration of the site function or reduction activities. Here, a synthesis of over 200 middle Holocene sites from across Alaska and Yukon is used to show that there is more variability in age, distribution, artifact morphology, and assemblage composition than can be explained within existing culture-historical frameworks. Detailed cluster analyses, spatial analyses, and lithic analyses are also used to interpret the lithic production sequences represented by ten relevant near-surface archaeological sites from the central and western Brooks Range of northern Alaska. These data suggest that the archaeological record for the middle Holocene in northern Alaska is strongly conditioned by production and maintenance of a variety of tool types as well as the timing of the addition of raw materials into the toolkit"--Leaf xiv.