The Paleoarchaic to Early Archaic Transition on the Colorado Plateau: The Archaeology of North Creek Shelter (original) (raw)
Related papers
High-tech foragers? Folsom and later Paleoindian technology on the Great Plains
Journal of World Prehistory, 2002
Archaeologists generally argue that early (ca. 11,000-8000 B.P.) populations on the North American Great Plains moved over very large areas, relying on sophisticated, biface-based flaked stone technology and on extensive resharpening and recycling of tools to cope with unpredictable access to raw material sources. This paper reviews the development of this reconstruction and considers the degree to which data from assemblages of Paleoindian flaked stone tools support it. Published information implies that patterns of raw material use vary greatly over the Plains, that bifaces were not the centerpiece of Paleoindian technology, that there are no published efforts to document an unusual degree of resharpening or recycling, and that the data that are available on these topics do not suggest that either was important. Detailed analysis of one assemblage, from the Allen site in southwestern Nebraska, carried out with these issues in mind, shows similar patterns. The great difference between what the literature says about Paleoindian technology and the documented character of that technology suggests that Paleoindian lifeways were far more variable than current discussions suggest.
The Paleoindian and Early Archaic Southeast, edited by David G. Anderson and Kenneth E. Sassaman, University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa., 1996
Resolving the lifeways of the first Americans entails the recovery and interpretation of information about a range of phenomena, including settlement and mobility strategies, subsistence pursuits, information exchange and mating networks, technological organization, burial customs, and the whole host of behaviors that make up archaeologically recoverable human culture. The material remains from the Paleoindian and Early Archaic periods, however, are comparatively few and far between when compared with the assemblages left by later peoples, and with rare exceptions, the preservation of perishables is minimal. To complicate matters, there are no ethno~aphic analogues to help us understand how preagricultural human populations colonized continental land masses the magnitude of North and South America, which were themselves characterized by climates and ecosystems lacking modem analogues. Understanding the initial human occupation of the New World, including the area we now know as the southeastern United States, is thus a supremely interesting challenge facing archaeologists, and in this volume, we are seeing how this challenge has b~n met. Here I will briefly recount some recent models that have been developed to interpret and explain the Paleoindian and Early Archaic archaeological record in the Eastern Woodlands, with particular attention to those of relevance in the Southern Appalachian area. The review proceeds from models that are broad in scale and scope, to more focused efforts dealing with smaller areas or subsets of the overall record. It also proceeds diachronically, from earlier to later in time, in acknowledgment of the marked changes that are evident over the roughly 3,5QO-year interval under examination. PALEOINDIAN COLONIZATION MODELS Regardless of whether one accepts the evidence for earlier occupation-' for the so-called pre-Clovis or preprojectile point horizons-there is little