Paleoindian Research Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

If there were geese anywhere in the universe besides earth, we should probably expect to find them in the constellation Vulpecula. Vulpecula the Fox was contrived by Johannes Hevelius, the famous Polish astronomer who was based in Gdansk in the seventeenth century. Hevelius originally named this constellation Vulpecula & Anser, or the Fox & Goose. It’s no longer possible, however, to take a gander at the Goose. The Goose is long gone, ingested by the Fox in whose jaws Hevelius mapped its neck. Vulpecula is located right next to Cygnus the Swan, and for this 2005 Boeing Science Writing Contest article, Bernie Taylor has allowed those extraterrestrial geese to migrate to an imagined planet in the Swan, Cygnus 3. Bernie Taylor is a quantitatively-minded naturalist living in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. His 2004 book, Biological Time, examines the rhythms that regulate the lives of animals and plants and documents as well as ancient and indigenous knowledge of these natural cycles.
Some of these biological rhythms are modulated by celestial phenomena, and so Mr. Taylor asks whether different astronomical circumstances would alter the behavior of geese on another world or even eliminate the possibility of their existence. His imaginary planet in some ways parallels the earth. It is the third planet from its sun, a solar-like star in Cygnus. Notwithstanding the similarity of Cygnus 3 to earth, looking for geese on that planet could be a wild-goose chase.
The ancients imagined the constellation Cygnus as a swan in flight, headed south. They linked its seasonal departure from the night sky to the autumn migration of water fowl. Our failure to find any geese on Cygnus 3 wouldn't necessarily mean they don’t exist. They could, after all, have just gone south on us. What’s good for the Goose is sauce for the Swan. —E.C. Krupp, Director of the Griffith Observatory

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- Chronobiology, Indigenous Studies, Indigenous or Aboriginal Studies, Ornithology

Evidence from preceramic Paleoindian and Archaic time periods in Belize has been recorded over the past quarter of a century by a number of projects. This paper summarizes previously published information and presents new archaeological data in bringing the hunting-and-gathering and itinerant horticultural millennia of this region into a more accurate and comprehensive perspective than has been presented to date. The Paleoindian period includes influences from North as well as South America, with settlement preferences shown for river valleys and near-coastal margins. Cave sites hold particular promise for yielding new and well-preserved remains from this early period. The Archaic, beginning as early as 8000 B.C., is poorly dated until 3400 B. C. and was probably characterized by mobile hunter-foragers. The Late Archaic includes two facets, the Early (3400-1900 B.C.) and the Late (1500-900 B.C.) Preceramic, and represents the first appearance and gradual spread of cultivation together with habitat modification. The period beginning around 1500 B.C. shows intensifying maize cultivation, apparently mobile populations, and also the emergence of well-defined stone tool traditions that trend into the early Middle Preclassic. Ceramics seem to appear unevenly from ca. 1200 to 900 B.C., when the Cunil and Kanocha complexes in western Belize and Swasey sphere in northern Belize are reported.

- by Jon Lohse and +3
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- Archaeology, Prehistoric Archaeology, Mesoamerican Archaeology, Maya Archaeology

The current study begins with the premise that the archaeological record is inherently biased by processes
of landscape evolution. Older archaeological deposits are frequently under-represented at the surface of the
modern landscape due to cyclical periods of erosion and deposition during the Holocene (<11,500 cal BP).
These geomorphic processes are well expressed in District 1 where the many high-relief river canyons have
undergone intense periods of erosion, removing once habitable terraces; and the inter-montane valleys became
sediment traps as floodplains and alluvial fans developed episodically over the last 15,000 years. Just as
importantly, the Pacific coastline in District 1 has progressively been inundated and eroded since sea-level began
to rise at the end of the Pleistocene, continuing to the present day. The net-effect of these changes is a loss of
many portions of the landscape once available for human occupation, as well as a modern ground surface made
up of a mosaic of ancient and recent landforms, each of which has very different potential to preserve a complete
record of human occupation.

- by Alan Garfinkel
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- Native American Studies, Archaeology, Anthropology, California Indians
- by Mark Cole
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- Paleoindians, Paleoindian archaeology, Paleoindian, Alabama history

Profile of Bonnie Pitblado in "Mammoth Trumpet," Volume 32, Number 3, pp. 15-20. Author: Martha Deeringer.

- by Bonnie L Pitblado and +1
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- Archaeology, Paleoindians, The peopling of the Americas, Early peopling of America

Paleoindian era archaeological materials remain significantly understudied in West Virginia. This brief provides the first summary of West Virginian Paleoindian artifacts in 50 years and reports 13 newly identified specimens. Most artifacts derive from the Ohio and Kanawha river valleys but new finds including fluted, Quad, Beaver Lake, and Dalton point types from some of the most mountainous portions of the state suggest that early groups also utilized interior river valleys and uplands.

- by Richie Rosencrance
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- Paleoindians, Clovis, Paleoindian Research, West Virginia
- by Mark Cole
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- Paleoindians, Paleoindian archaeology, Paleoindian, Clovis

This paper argues that the Rocky Mountains played a significantly more important role in the process of the peopling of the New World than archaeologists have traditionally recognized. Although First Americans did not reach the Rockies before they set foot in any other New World regiondthey could not have, regardless of their point of entrydby Clovis time, evidence suggests that Clovis people knew the Rocky Mountain landscape intimately. Archaeologists should have long anticipated this, given the many resources the Rocky Mountains offer that adjacent, albeit archaeologically better-known regions such as the Plains and some parts of the Far West do not; at least not as ubiquitously. These include plentiful water in the form of streams, lakes, snowpack, and glaciers; high-quality sources of obsidian, chert, quartzite and other knappable stone; and a vertically oriented landscape that maximizes floral and faunal diversity within comparatively condensed space. Two other non-economic characteristics likely contributed significantly to the appeal of the Rocky Mountains to some First Americans: the power and sanctity nearly all humans attribute to mountains, and the seemingly little-recognized fact that northeast Asian Upper Paleolithic people who populated the New World during the terminal Pleistocene occupied mountainous landscapes for some 45,000 years prior to their departure. For many First Americans, mountainsdnot the flat, windswept tundra of Si-berian stereotypesdhad always been home. Evidence for the familiarity of Clovis groups with the Rocky Mountain landscapes comes principally from three Clovis caches: Anzick, Fenn, and Mahaffy. All three caches are located in the Rockies, collectively contain artifacts made from ten of the highest-quality stone raw materials available in the Southern, Central and Northern Rockies, and at least one of the caches accompanies the burial of a young child who appears to have been interred intentionally on a prominent and likely sacred landform in a mountain valley. Bringing the paper's argument full circle, that same child's genetic profile shows a direct link to that of another youngster buried thousands of years earlier at the Late Glacial Maximum Mal'ta site in the mountainous Trans-Baikal region of Siberia.

The purpose of this paper is to help the reader understand the general envi-rons of Paleoindian sites in the Middle Tennessee Valley, specifically in Limestone County, Alabama, as well as some of the history surrounding them. It is common knowledge that these sites exist in large numbers and varieties in this area, but little has been written on the subject. It is hoped that by providing this information an interest in the study, excavation, reporting, and preservation of these important sites can be accomplished.

- by Mark Cole
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- Paleoindians, Paleoindian archaeology, Paleoindian, Paleoindians, Paleolithic, Clovis

The Intermountain West is rarely included in discussions of the North American Paleoindian record, largely because there is so little evidence for Clovis in that region. What has been ignored in these discussions is the presence of an early recordin the region associated not with Clovis, but with a different technology, the main diagnostic of which is the large, contracting stemmed projectile point. Dates associated with this technology are comparable to the earliest Clovis dates on the
Plains. An examination of the spatial and temporal distributions of Clovis diagnostics suggests that elements of this technologyarrived relatively late in the Intermountain West, apparently the termination of a diffusion (or migration) process that began in the southern Plains or Southeast, moved northward along the Rocky Mountain front, and eventually onto the Columbia Plateau. We argue that initial colonization of the intermountain region most likely involved groups moving inland from the Pacific coast carrying a non- Clovis technology, which was already in place by the time Clovis technology arrived.

- by Charlotte Beck
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- Paleoindian Research

Clovis is the best known early development in North America but its lithic technology is poorly documented and often from animal kill sites. This evidence has been used to picture Clovis peoples as mobile, colonizing, big-game hunters and explanations of lithic technological practices have been framed largely in materialist terms. Increasing documentation suggests views about how the complex Clovis biface and blade production strategies relate to subsistence, land use, and specific kinds of mobility patterns are questionable and often difficult to test with archaeological data. We need to seriously consider the role of Clovis people's worldview in structuring their thought and technical actions.

This report documents and analyzes two distinct assemblages from a pair of Paleoindian and Early Archaic localities in north Alabama. It resulted from an interesting discovery at MA85, a site in the uplands of Madison County, Alabama, where Tuscumbia (St. Louis) and Monteagle (St. Genevive) cherts were equally abundant to Fort Payne in the projectile point and toolmaking industries. This was believed to be in sharp contrast with the author’s collections from other early sites, in particular his collection from Heaven’s Half Acre in Colbert County, a site only a few miles from the Tennessee River. In both collections, the author used a non-discriminative collecting methodology, allowing materials used at these two important localities to be analyzed for both site function and raw material preference. Findings suggest both localities served as processing, tool making and reduction sites, possibly even quarries, and that the preference for Tuscumbia and Monteagle at MA85 versus Fort Payne at Heaven’s Half Acre was a function of strategy. It is hoped that providing this information will tell us more about early life in the Tennessee Valley from the Pleistocene through the Early Holocene.

This paper describes the results of archaeological testing conducted at 18 TA 212b, which is part of the Paw Paw Cove Paleo-Indian Site Complex in Talbot County on Maryland’s portion of the Delmarva Peninsula. The Paw Paw Cove Complex represents one of Maryland’s largest and most intact Paleo-Indian occupation sites. The site is presently in a coastal setting, but approximately 13,000 years ago the setting was an interior upland situated near a series of spring-fed wetlands. Previous archaeological investigations have focused on the archaeological components associated with 18 TA 212a. The report presents the history linked to the site’s discovery, an overview of the historical impacts to the study area, an overview of the prehistoric impacts to the study area, and provides a summary of all of the earlier work linked to the various archaeological sites in the same vicinity as 18 TA 212b. Archaeological excavations were conducted at 18 TA 212b through a non-capital grant from the Maryland Historical Trust; efforts donated by members of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Archaeological Research Foundation; volunteer time provided by Dr. R. Michael Stewart of Temple University; efforts donated by Geo-Sci Consultants, Inc.; and countless hours of earlier research conducted by the principle investigator. The methodologies associated with the 1999-2000 excavations at 18 TA 212b are described. The excavations located and documented stratified Paleo-Indian and Early Archaic cultural materials. The Paleo-Indian occupation surface is associated with a buried landscape. The Paleo-Indian landscape was buried during a Late Pleistocene aeolian loess event coeval with the Younger Dryas climate episode. Current research suggests that this Paleo-Indian landscape occurs throughout the region and would seem to be an easily recognizable chronostratigraphic unit unique to the northern and western sections of the Delmarva Peninsula.
Previous Paleo-Indian researchers in the region have summarized the Paleo-Indian period of the Delmarva Peninsula. The views of local Paleo-Indian lifeways have been largely reconstructed by means of limited stone tool assemblage data. As such, the report summarizes the lithic materials associated with the Delmarva Peninsula and highlights the Paleo-Indian lithic technologies based on local assemblages. Some researchers have suggested that the Delmarva Peninsula Paleo-Indian record is documented by a limited number of isolated fluted point finds. These same researchers have suggested that the greatest concentration of Clovis or Clovis-like points in the region is located near the primary jasper quarries associated with the Delaware Chalcedony Complex in northern Delaware. Specific data are provided that indicate these assertions are in error. The middle to lower Delmarva Peninsula has revealed a Paleo-Indian archaeological database that is as rich as anywhere in North America. It is argued that this rich Paleo-Indian record is linked to restricted mobility and entrenched settlement patterns that may have been focused toward the food and animal resources unique to the outer coastal plain. Paleo-Indian settlement patterns are compared with the local Late Woodland sites that are situated in the same ecological settings as their earlier Paleo-Indian counterparts. It is noted that Delmarva’s interior upland Late Woodland sites and the Paleo-Indian sites in the equivalent settings have the same “character” and overall make-up. The report suggests Paleo-Indian peoples in the coastal plain may have been exploiting marine resources along the Late Pleistocene Atlantic seashore and within the diminutive ancestral Chesapeake Bay. The suggested dense Paleo-Indian populations, restricted mobility, and entrenched settlement patterns with possible territorial boundaries would imply that the claims for earlier pre-Clovis peoples in the Middle Atlantic are valid. The report concludes with suggestions for future research.

- by Brooke M. Morgan
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- Native American Studies, Archaeology, Prehistoric Archaeology, Spatial Analysis

late 1920s, peopling archaeology has sought to understand the earliest human occupants of the Western Hemisphere. Three generations of practitioners have made great strides in the techno-environmental arena. However, we have largely failed to tap into PaleoIndigenous intellectual, emotional, and social lives-the very domains that made Ice Age people as fully human as we are. As a result, our interpretations of those pioneering populations could often apply as readily to a colony of ants or a herd of wildebeest as they do to living, breathing, thinking, dreaming, loving, striving human ancestors. This article first explores the reasons for our failure to fully actualize First Peoples, identifying and implicating a feedback loop that includes practitioner homogeneity (we have always been and continue to be disproportionately white men of European descent); our predominantly positivist worldview; our language, training, and practice; and even the limited nature of the material record we study. This article also, however, highlights the ways that an important minority of peopling scholars have sought to access the humanity of PaleoIndigenous people. By more consistently mobilizing our own human capacity to creatively interrogate the deep past, we will produce scholarship that more consistently recognizes the capacity of the people who lived it and, just as importantly, respects those living today.

- by Bonnie L Pitblado
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- Paleoindians, The peopling of the Americas, Paleoindian Ritual, Paleoamericans

A description and analysis of the information recovered during the 1996 CRM fieldwork at the Early Paleo-Indian (fluted point-related) Gosling site is presented. The site is located in the City of Guelph, Wellington County, Ontario and is a single component one assignable to the Parkhill Phase based on the recovery of a Barnes type fluted point. The assemblage from the site is the largest recovered from an Ontario Parkhill Phase site removed from the strandline of pro-glacial Lake Algonquin/Ardtrea. Yet, the assemblage is a very small, diffuse, lithic scatter including only 24 artifacts recovered over an area of 373 square metres. The majority of the assemblage is from a controlled surface collection as the site was not recognized as a Paleo-Indian component until, in stripping the ploughzone in an attempt to find features, the fluted point was recovered. Nonetheless, Gosling is of some significance as it expands our currently highly biased knowledge of the Parkhill Phase in terms of site locational preferences, tool inventories and lithic raw material source selections. In addition, as an object lesson, the site highlights a number of characteristics of Paleo-Indian sites, known primarily to specialists in that field, which need to become better known in the CRM community. These characteristics should assist in recognizing such sites in the future in cases where diagnostic fluted points are not recovered.

In a recent American Antiquity forum (Pitblado 2014), I argued that not only is it possible for archaeologists to engage in ethical collaborations with members of the artifact-collecting public, but that the Society for American Archaeology’s “Principles of Archaeological Ethics” stipulates that we should do so. This is not a message, however, that has fully permeated the archaeological community, which has led to a schism between populations who are often natural allies. This paper starts with that premise: that archaeologists should actively pursue collaborations with the artifact-collecting community with the goal of advancing research agendas, public education, and long-term care of collections in private hands. The paper offers guidelines for establishing and nurturing professional-collector relationships in a way that furthers the directives of legal and ethical archaeological codes. I begin with an overview of the changing nature of professional-collector relationships during the twentieth century, exploring reasons for the divisiveness that has characterized recent decades. I next suggest five steps for establishing appropriate relationships with artifact collectors—and avoiding inappropriate ones. Finally, I describe how I followed those steps to establish a network of collector-collaborators to build the foundation for a Paleoamerican research program in southeastern Idaho and northern Utah.

- by Frederic Sellet
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- Lithic Technology, Paleoindians, Paleoindian archaeology, Paleoindian Research

In 1961, Dr. Ralph Solecki reported a Chesapeake Bay Paleo-Indian projectile point discovery in AMERICAN ANTIQUITY. Solecki postulated that the “fluted point found along the shoreline at Poplar Island could be explained in terms of worldwide climatic shifts and lowered sea level.” The Chesapeake Bay at present encompasses approximately 4,479 square miles of estuarine water and it contains almost 12,000 linear miles of coastline. Numerous archaeological sites occur along the margins of the bay and its tributaries. Thousands of these sites are regularly threatened by the daily onslaught of wind and wave activity. The Delmarva Peninsula, which encompasses the eastern margins of the bay, has revealed approximately 350 Clovis-style fluted projectile points. Later and potentially earlier Paleo-American sites have also been discovered. Most of these sites and their associated assemblages have been found as a result of active coastal erosion. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the erosion threats observed at Paleoindian sites. A few of these rapidly disappearing sites have been partially investigated over the past 35 years and offer unique insights into regional Paleoindian adaptations. Finally, the presentation will outline how Dr. Dennis Stanford has contributed to the analysis of these rapidly disappearing coastal Paleo-American sites.

- by Christopher J. Ellis
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- Lithic Technology, Lithics, Paleoindians, Paleoindian archaeology

Please see: In the Eastern Fluted Point Tradition Volume 1&2

- by Joseph A M Gingerich
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- Paleoindians, Stone tools, Paleoindian archaeology, Paleoindian Research

The projectile points known as Fishtail or Fell represent a specific design associated with the earliest
hunter-gatherers of the Pleistocene-Holocene transition in South America. Brazil was traditionally
considered as a marginal area of their distribution because in the past there were only a
small number of findings known, often inadequately documented. In this paper we present a general
and unified overview of the Brazilian record, including previously unpublished metric, technological
and stylistic features. Also, we report on new findings of fishtail points in order to expand
the amount of information currently available. Some issues related to these records are also
evaluated by comparing them with data from the Uruguayan plains and the Argentinean pampas.
The general picture that emerges after this analysis shows a growing record of fishtail projectile
points in southern Brazil, demonstrating a significant presence of these early paleo-South American
populations.

- by Daniel Loponte and +2
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- Archaeology, Prehistoric Archaeology, Brazilian Archaeology, Lithic Technology

Fishtail or Fell projectile points constitute a specific design associated with early hunter-gatherers at the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary in many parts of South America, especially along the Pacific Coast, Patagonia, and the Argentinian-Uruguayan Pampas. In this paper, we present new records of fishtail projectile points, recovered mainly in the southern states of Brazil, including design and metric descriptions, as well as some technological features, which are similar to other South American findings. The pieces are curated in different academic and private collections, some of them were available a long time ago for its study, but they have not been published until now. This record doubles, at least, the known data available of these projectiles on Brazilian territory. Finally, we discuss in brief the importance of this widely distributed record within the context of the peopling of southern Brazil.

- by Daniel Loponte and +2
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- Archaeology, Prehistoric Archaeology, South America (Archaeology), North American archaeology

Early Paleoindians in North Alabama exploited resources using systematic techniques, yet the prediction of intact sites remains elusive. Analysis of the spatial distribution of fluted points, combined with raw material use, reveals that the densest sites focus on landforms that offer one or more secondary geographic features (resources). Findings suggest an affinity for drainage corridors with additional properties added during the foraging cycle, resulting in resource exploitation across watersheds in a circular pattern. It is hoped this study will assist in the early identification of intact sites for further research.

- by Mark Cole
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- Paleoindians, Late Paleoindian Archaeology, Paleoindian archaeology, Paleoindian

Archaeologists lack a protocol for systematically attributing quartzite artifacts to particular geologic sources of the material. This paper, in an effort to begin to remedy that situation, reports the preliminary results of a petrographic study of quartzite samples from the Upper Gunnison Basin (UGB), Colorado. In that region, the overwhelming predominance of quartzite (often > 90 per cent) at most archaeological sites has hampered efforts to ascertain with any certainty the mobility strategies of Paleoamerican (and later) residents. In this study, qualitative and quantitative characterization of texture and grain composition of 50 UGB quartzite specimens led to the identification of six statistically distinct groups of samples. The groups are not arbitrary divisions of the data set; rather, they are meaningful from geologic, geospatial, chronological, and human-behavioral perspectives.

- by Bonnie L Pitblado and +1
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- Sedimentary Petrography, Paleoindians, Lithic Sourcing, 3) Petrography and Manufacturing Technology of Ancient Ceramics

Lagoa Santa, a karstic area in eastern Central Brazil, has been subject to research on human paleontology and archaeology for 175 years. Almost 300 Paleoindian human skeletons have been found since Danish naturalist Peter Lund's pioneering work. Even so, some critical issues such as the role of rockshelters in settlement systems, and the possible paleoclimatic implications of the peopling of the region have yet to be addressed. We present some results obtained from recent excavations at four rockshelters and two open-air sites, new dates for human Paleoindian skeletons, and a model to explain the cultural patterns observed so far. It is also argued that the Paleoindian subsistence system at Lagoa Santa was similar to other locations in South America: generalized small-game hunting complemented by fruits, seed, and root gathering.

- by Renato Kipnis and +1
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- Lithics, Paleoindians, South American Archaeology, South American Paleoindian Archaeology

The following report, which appeared in MARYLAND ARCHAEOLOGY, briefly discusses the assemblages associated with Meekins Neck Paleoindian site complex.

Ushki sites complex (Central Kamchatka) is one of the most famous geoarchaeological objects in Northeast Asia. The article presents the results of trasological analysis of stone beads and pendants from Paleolithic burial of VIIth cultural layer of Ushki-I site. The ornaments are among the most ancient and widespread evidence of symbolic behavior in the region. Through the use of modern microscopic and photographic equipment the author found various categories of use-wear traces and traces of manufacture on them. Analysis of use-wear and experimental data allowed to identify a number of functional types of ancient personal ornaments and reconstruct the main stages of manufacturing. The first type of personal ornaments includes beads and one pendant that were used as components of necklaces, bracelets or amulets. Single beads for hanging on a string or strap represent the second type. The third type of personal ornaments (plaque to be sewed on clothes) includes a pendant with five holes. The technology of producing the ornaments consisted of such operations as primary abrasive finishing, drilling and polishing.

Lagoa Santa sempre foi uma área importante do ponto de vista arqueológico e paleontológico, não só no Brasil como no exterior. Desde os trabalhos pioneiros de Peter Lund, na primeira metade do Século XX, a região foi objeto de estudo por várias equipes de pesquisadores brasileiros e estrangeiros. Entre 2000 e 2009 realizamos um projeto interdisciplinar na região, denominado “Origens e Microevolução do Homem na América” . Apresentaremos aqui os principais resultados obtidos nestes nove anos de pesquisa, relacionados à cronologia, subsistência e cultura material das populações que habitaram a região entre 12.000 e 8.000 anos atrás. Tais resultados, quando associados aos dados arqueológicos já existentes para a porção oriental da América do Sul, têm fortes implicações para o entendimento dos processos de povoamento do continente americano.

- by Kevin P. Smith
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- Archaeology, North American archaeology, Paleoindians, Great Lakes Archaeology
- by Kevin P. Smith
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- Archaeology, North American archaeology, Paleoindians, Great Lakes Archaeology
- by Christopher J. Ellis
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- Archaeology, Prehistoric Archaeology, Lithic Technology, Paleoindians