Anth 3511 Professor Gibbon

Later Paleo-Indian Cuitures

1. Introduction. Clovis culture disappeared about 8900 BC. Its disappearance corresponds with the end of the Wisconsin Ice Age and the disappearance of Ice Age megafauna. Subsequent, later Paleo-Indian groups diversified away from big game hunting. Some general summary conclusions:

A. Later Paleo-Indian life-ways lasted fiom about 8900 to 8000/6000 BC, depending on area. These were very stable life-ways despite the rapid changes taking place in the natural environment.

B. Most later Paleo-Indians became generalized hunter-gatherers; focal pedestrian bison and caribou hunters are found on the Great Plains and along the cold northern fringe, respectively.

C. In general, sites are small with a thin artifact layer. Some are base camps and the majority are special activity sites, such as quarries, kills, and plant harvesting locales. Because of the rapidly changing landscape, these sites often occur today in unexpected places (e.g., in the middle of a field - far from water).

D. In general, later Paleo-Indian material culture is similar to Clovis except for the style of projectile point. The earliest (e.g., Folsom, Cumberland, Gainey) are fluted; later points have lanceolate shapes and are nicely made. In most areas lanceolate points were replaced by Archaic points with stems or corner or side notches.

E. These life-ways probably involved small family groups that followed an annual pattern of movement through very large areas. Favored sites were probably reoccupied year-after-year and family groups aggregated with other bands when food was abundant.

F. Population densities were still very small. However, population size gradually rose during this 1000-3000 year period until "free roaming" was forced to an end by regional "packing." The most rapid increases in population occurred in the most food abundant areas, causing an imbalance in population distribution across the continent.

G. Knowledge about later Paleo-Indians is still fragmentary, with sites in many areas consisting primarily of isolated projectile points or a few points in a multicomponent, mixed site.

 

2. Late Paleo-Indian Cultures in the Plains (ca. 9000-6000 BC).

A. Most of the best known later Paleo-Indian sites are bison kills on the Plains. A black cowboy, George McJunkin, found the first undisputed association of Ice Age-like animals (a now extinct form of bison) with tools at the Folsom site, New Mexico, in 1910.

B. Paleo-Indians shifted from broad spectrum big game hunting to focal pedestrian bison hunting as bison became short grass feeders on the expanding grasslands.

C. Famous sites include Folsom (NM), Lindenmeier, Jones-Miller, and Olsen-Chubbock (Colo.), and Casper and Hanson in Wyo. Many Paleo-Indian sites in the last 20 years were excavated by George Frison of the University of Wyoming.

D. It was a very simple, highly portable material culture that changed slowly. There was a sequence of point types; Clovis, Folsom, Agate Basin, Hell Gap, Alberta, Scottsbluff/Eden. A hunter's tool kit (mostly points, knives, scrapers) .

E. Because of lush (wetter) grasslands during Folsom times, Folsom people may have had larger communal hunts and a more complex social organization.

3. Paleo-Indian Occupations in the West

A. Although Paleo-Indian points, especially fluted points, are widespread in the West, sites are smaller and rarer because of the arid conditions except in the Southwest (e.g., Blackwater Draw site) where it was much wetter than today. There was probably a very sparse population.

B. San Dieguito complex (9000-8000 BC) in driest areas of California, the Great Basin, parts of the Southwest. Leaf-shaped and shouldered points.

C. It's possible there were many sites along the southern California coast, because the coast of the period is under water now. The Daisy Cave site (8500 BC) on one of the Channel Islands 2.5 miles off the coast, supports the idea of a coastal route from Alaska.

D. Other coastal sites supporting idea of a coastal route:

(1) the Kennewick skeleton from the banks of the Columbia River in Washington: 7300 BC, (a complete skeleton of 40-55 year-old man, Caucasoid?)

(2) On-Your-Knees cave on Prince of Wales island in Tongass National Forest, southwest coast of Alaska: 7800 BC, partial skeleton of man in his 20s.

4. Paleo-Indian Occupations in the East

A. There were two major settlement-subsistence traditions:

(1) A northern tundra and spruce forest group that focused on caribou: their important base camps are Debert (Nova Scotia), Gainey (Michigan), and Bull Brook (Mass.), but most sites are small special acivity sites (e.g., Vail in Maine) or scattered projectile points.

(2) A more southern group of generalized hunter-gatherers in the boreal and deciduous forests: Shawanee-Minissink in PA (8700-8500 BC), Flint Run complex in Virginia (Thunderbird site); a centrally-based wandering cycle anchored at quarries and annual resources locales.

B. There were many more fluted points and of greater variety in the East than the West (called the Eastern Fluted Point tradition). So some think they are older.

C. Probably highly mobile patrilocal and exogamous bands that interacted frequently for information, goods, mates, entertainment, ritual. A highly flexible social organization with extensive kin ties and marriage alliances that allowed movement back and forth from one band to another.

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