Paleoindians

If belief drives behavior, what did first nations peoples believe? Though a material approach attempts to bridge the gap, other disciplines such as philology may be of assistance and compatible with a strict material diagnostic. This paper marries material evidence and current theory with immaterial evidence from other disciplines for a working model to understand the most basic questions as to why there were people in America before Columbus.

An overview of the archaeological data produced over the last decades for Brazil, coupled with a background of recent paleoenvironmentalstudies, suggests that during the mid-Holocene vast areas of Central Brazil ceased to be occupied by human groups. Independent data from dated human skeletons, rock-shelter stratigraphy, and chronology of open-air sites converge to support the inference that these areas were depopulated or altogether abandoned. Paleoenvironmental data suggest that dryness events constitute the major cause behind the observed trends. This
phenomenon expands the already perceived notion that climatic stresses had a major role in the shaping of human settlement patterns in marginal environments, such as deserts and high-altitude settings.

Across North and South America, the final millennia of the Pleistocene saw dramatic changes in climate, vegetation, fauna, fire regime, and other local and regional paleo-environmental characteristics. Rapid climate shifts following the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) exerted a first-order influence, but abrupt post-glacial shifts in vegetation composition, vegetation structure, and fire regime also coincided with human arrival and transformative faunal extinctions in the Americas. We propose a model of post-glacial vegetation change in response to climatic drivers, punctuated by local fire regime shifts in response to megaherbivore-driven fuel changes and anthropogenic ignitions. The abrupt appearance of humans, disappearance of megaherbivores, and resulting changes in New World fire systems were transformative events that should not be dismissed in favor of climate-only interpretations of post-glacial paleo-environmental shifts in the Americas. Fire is a mechanism by which small human populations can have broad impacts, and growing evidence suggests that early anthropogenic influences on regional, even global, paleo-environments should be tested alongside other potential causal mechanisms.

Eastern South America, or what is today Brazilian territory, poses interesting questions about the early human occupation of the Americas. Three totally distinct and contemporaneous lithic technologies, dated between 11,000 and 10,000 14C BP, are present in different portions of the country: the Umbu tradition in the south, with its formal bifacial industry, with well-retouched scrapers and bifacial points; the Itaparica tradition in the central-west / northwest, totally unifacial, whose only formal artifacts are limaces; and the "Lagoa Santa" industry, completely lacking any formal artifacts, composed mainly of small quartz flakes. Our data suggests that these differences are not related to subsistence or raw-material constraints, but rather to different cultural norms and transmission of strongly divergent chaînes opératoires. Such diversity in material culture, when viewed from a cultural transmission (CT) theory standpoint, seems at odds with a simple Clovis model as the origin of these three cultural traditions given the time elapsed since the first Clovis ages and the expected population structure of the early South American settlers.

Now is a good time for a volume like Strangers in a New Land—a time in which the specific details of the much-maligned “Clovis-first” model appear to fit less satisfactorily with emerging archaeological information, and yet no specific model has taken hold as an adequately detailed and agreed-upon alternative. This book does not attempt to provide a specific model so much as to present a collection of sites that such a model should incorporate. Although it has its flaws, it mostly succeeds in this regard.

Resumo: O sítio arqueológico Lapa Grande de Taquaraçu é um abrigo sob rocha localizado no município de Taquaraçu de Minas, MG. Sua indústria lítica foi manufaturada majoritariamente a partir de cristais de quartzo com o objetivo de produzir lascas. Os artefatos apresentam a tendência de terem atributos métricos reduzidos. Estas características seguem o padrão encontrado em outros sítios de Lagoa Santa. Palavras-chave: indústria lítica, análise quantitativa, Lapa Grande Taquaraçu, Lagoa Santa. Abstract: The archaeological site Lapa Grande de Taquaraçu is a rock shelter located in the municipality of Taquaraçu de Minas, MG. Its lithic industry was mostly manufactured from quartz crystals in order to produce flakes. Artifacts tend to show reduced metric attributes. These characteristics follow the pattern found in other Lagoa Santa sites.

The purpose of this article is to bring awareness to fluted points of the Gainey form (see Don Simons et al 1984) present in the Rummells & Maske collections from an Early Paleoindian locality in eastern Iowa (see Morrow and Morrow 2002). The Rummells-Maske site was discovered by two men independently: Wayne Rummells and Richard (Dick) Maske in 1964 who never collected the site locality together but knew of each others hafted bifaces.

Sophisticated diagnostics have allowed archaeologists to make great inroads in understanding America's First people. At the same time, modern archaeology has assumptions about reality that have limited its scope and ability to integrate other disciplines into its theories, disciplines that would clarify and cement a harmony of the disparate and isolated work sites into a model of global proportions. If beliefs determine behavior, it runs near impossible to paint a holistic picture as to what drove the complex peopling of America from the material record alone.  This paper marries material evidence and current theory with immaterial evidence from other disciplines for a working model to understand the most basic questions as to why there were people in America before Columbus. This paper was originally submitted for scholastic review in 2014.

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

Sourcing artifacts is a key method for addressing anthropological issues of mobility and interaction. Although chert was one the most common toolstones used in prehistory, sourcing chert artifacts remains problematic. In this study an approach for sourcing chert is introduced that links a specific sampling protocol, Laser Ablation-Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS), and multivariate statistical analysis. The effectiveness of this approach is demonstrated through a controlled experiment examining intersource and intrasource variability at four different scales of analysis. The statistical analysis at four spatial scales allows determination of the spatial resolution of the chemical matching procedure outlined here. In this experiment geologic chert samples from the Edwards Plateau of Texas of known provenience are chemically evaluated allowing comparison of their expected origin against their known origin. This experiment used Edwards Plateau chert as it is a high quality material and was a major lithic source across the Southern High Plains and was often transported great distances. Macroscopic identification of Edwards Plateau chert can be problematic and at its best is unable to effectively discern from where within the 120,000 km2 of the region cherts originated. An understanding of the geological formation processes of chert provides a useful framework for addressing this issue. This study shows that through an effective methodology Edwards Plateau chert can be sourced to a finer spatial scale than previous studies.

This paper considers different aspects of lithic technology and the toolkits used during the peopling of Uruguay. At the site of
Pay Paso 1, three early cultural components were identified from chronological, stratigraphic, and archaeological observations.
We recorded blades and blade cores in the early components of Pay Paso 1 site. Artifacts recovered during the excavation of the
site allowed the definition of the weaponry and toolkits used by the early hunters, featuring different styles of projectile points,
bifaces, side-scrapers, knives, and artifacts made on blades. A solid base of 31 14C analyses provides a range of dates between
12,802 and 10,176 yr cal BP

Although it was excavated more than 30 years ago, the Rio Rancho Folsom site remains poorly known among archaeologists interested in Paleoindian prehistory.  This is primarily because no major report on the site has ever been published, and the few articles available do not convey much about its size, complexity, or contents.  Our goal is to shed a little more light on this remarkable site by presenting the results of an examination of the extensive evidence it contains for Folsom point manufacture.  In addition, we evaluate this evidence against models of Folsom technological organization that focus on one component of the system: weapons tip replacement and raw material consumption.

Fishbone and Crypt caves, located in the eastern Winnemucca Lake basin, may be the oldest sites in the Lahontan basin, and the only occupations dating to at least the Clovis Period. In the 1950’s Phil Orr excavated portions of the caves, discovering a rich inventory of articles. Extinct Pleistocene fauna was recovered; two horse mandibles from Fishbone Cave date to ca. 13,230 and 13,110 cal BP, while a possible cache of grasshoppers found in lakebed sediments within Crypt Cave date to 14,150 cal BP. The Center for the Study of the First Americans surveyed the eastern Winnemucca caves in 2016 to assess their condition and attempt to determine if intact Pleistocene deposits remain. Preliminary examination of the caves indicates that despite large scale looting, artifacts as well as intact deposits are present in all of the caves. Future testing of these intact sediments could verify the antiquity of the sites.

Recently, advocates of an “older-than-Clovis” occupation of eastern North America have suggested that bi-pointed leaf-shaped lanceolate stone bifaces provide definitive evidence of human culture on the eastern seaboard prior to the Late Glacial Maximum (LGM).  This argument hinges on two observations: First, that points of this form are exceedingly rare in the East, and second, that all known occurrences of these point forms are from landforms or depositional environments dating to some time before the late Pleistocene.  Neither of these observations is supported by the archaeological record.  Bi-pointed leaf shaped blades have been recovered from throughout the Middle Atlantic and Northeast, where they have been repeatedly dated, either radiometrically or by association with diagnostic artifacts, to between the Late Archaic and the Early Woodland.  Statistical analysis of supposed “older-than-Clovis” leaf-shaped blades demonstrates that there are no significant differences in morphology between them and unequivocally Middle Holocene material culture.  Until such time as evidence demonstrates otherwise, there is no reason to accept that these leaf-shaped bifaces are diagnostic of a Pleistocene, much less pre-LGM, occupation in eastern North America.