Lecture #3 Part 2

What brings the clovis time period to an end?

-Younger dryas: mini ice age after main ice sheets start to melt caused by comet by massive asteroid impact in greenland, leading to climatic shift and some megafauna extinction -mb had impact on clovis

what do conspiracy theorists think about the cerutti site

-argue that cerutti was disputed bc it was orthodox and challenged thinking in archeology -but reality is it does not hold up to scientific rigor

What is it like in eastern part of north america in the archaic period?

-bigger role of plants in diet and decrease in large body animals -increase of use of low ranked resources like shellfish -new emphasize on riverine resources -say lower ranked bc not preferred earlier on

Is there any artwork in the americas?

-carvings in nevada were found between 10,500-14,000 years old -earliest known carvings in new world -carved into rock

What races do forensic anthropologists recognize?

-caucasoid: west asia, europe -mongoloid: mongolian, east asia and americas -negroid: africans, australians -help them to identify skeletons

What caused the changes in technology during the archaic period?

-change in perspective lead to change in technology -if you are starting to go after things in large quantities that means, you need to be able to process them, bulk processing and storage

Do we have any paleoindian DNA?

-don't have a lot -DNA we have found were very similar to north east asia -but were finding a particular genetic trait not found in east asia but in west asia and the americas -gave evidence to idea that maybe ppl crossed the atlantic but this has been disproved bc found another source in siberia

what kind of social rankings were there in paleoindian and archaic

-egalitarian social organization, everyone is equal we think in paleoindian -ranking in archaic period there are some burials that are more elaborate that others for example

what did the forest of eastern north america provide

-had a lot of food resources for archaic ppl -lots of game animals, trees, fruits, nuts, -there is evidence of ppl utilizing these things pretty early on

What is the Solutrean Hypothesis?

-idea that was proposed that maybe people came across north atlantic and came into north america that way based on stone tools that were similar to clovis tools -not the only way but another possibility

What is a mass kill site?

-in colorado -a site that is a mass kill site where a large group of bisons were driven into an arroyo and killed by folsom hunters

What is the gault site?

-in texas -has clovis materials and later stuff in the same site -show substantial pre clovis occupation too -have heavily reliance on small animals and plants at this site for the clovis people, most remains found were of turtles and this suggests the ppl that we thought were highly mobile moving around and following big game found a place they like and hung out here

What is friedkin site

-in texas too -there are spear points that are older than clovis here and has a stem not a flute -date is 15,500 years ago older than clovis by 2,000 years

What is the coastal migration hypothesis?

-island hopping following coastal resources to multiple points on pacific coast -used small boats and followed edge of ice -not a lot of evidence of this but earlier sites might be underwater

When does the archaic period start?

-it is very vague starts when big game hunting goes out and ends when you see agriculture -warmer and wetter period than previous periods

What is cactus Hill?

-located in virigina USA -site situated in a sand dune -there are clovis points from this site and stuff underneath it, the deeper smt is the older it is -but we don't have great dates for this area, not much to radiocarbon date in this area but did it on soil but do not know if they are accurate

Is there such thing as pre clovis culture/people?

-many of the early sites were controversial, like nothing to date or dating incorrectly -dates at least to 16-15,000 years ago mb early

what may the increase in hickory nuts and other nuts a result of?

-may be due to expansions of the forests that make these types of nuts -suggesting ppl are managing trees, they are not domesticating but they are still changing the landscape and making it more usable for particular types of trees

Why may have paleoindians not have eaten plants?

-maybe bc of lack of plant food resources and processing technologies

What is the beringia refuge hypothesis?

-migration route to america -ppl crossed land bridge beringia and hit a wall of ice that was separating alaska from rest of americas and hung out there resulting in genetic isolation from their asian sister clades -then migrated southward distributing founder types all the way to south america

If a coastal island hopping route into the new world is at all correct what must the paleoindians have needed to have?

-needed to have technology to travel along coastlines

What is the kelp highway?

-newer model for coastal migration route -kelp forests may have played role in facilitating movement of maritime peoples from asia to americas near end of pleistocene

How did they store food in archaic period?

-no evidence of food storage during paleoindian period -archaic period we start to see ppl diggind pits to store food

compare garbade accumulation in paleoindian ands archaic?

-not a lot of garbage in paleoindian sites -get a lot of midden accumulation of garbage in archaic sites

how many ppl are in paleoindian period vs archaic

-not a lot of ppl in paleoindian , dont use marginal habitats -in archaic lots of ppl, more density using more marginal areas

Was there any environmental modification during paleoindian and archaic periods?

-paleo: little environmental modification -archaic: are altering environment by burning and cutting down the forests, modifying lands to how they want

Did they have exotic materials in patheoindian and archaic

-paleo: trading exotic non local materials over long distances -archaic: using local stuff

What kind of animals were present in paleoindian vs archaic?

-paleoindian: mostly big game -archaic: smaller more diverse game

Why was the transition from paleoindian --> archaic not as big as we thought?

-paleoindians were already using small plants -there is a change in food processing and cooking -paleoindians may not have been as mobile as we thought and we have been finding paleoindian burials

What are people eating in archaic period?

-plants -it is a intensive forgery period too meaning they are using a lot of diff types of food to feed themselves

What is the ice free corridor hypothesis?

-ppl followed ice free corridor and walked between glaciers which allowed them to get into the rest of north america from siberia to the US -

How did they move in archaic vs. paleoindian

-relatively large band ranges, moving over huge distances -archaic: not moving as much

Who is Kennewick Man?

-resembled native ppl of northern japan -the reconstruction takes that into account and put beard on reconstruction as they usually wore beards here

What kind of food did they eat during archaic period?

-shellfish, plant foods, animal protein -change in attitude about what qualifies as food and ppl realizing they can get large amount of resources that are not as appealing but it is abundant, suggesting a shift in thinking

What is the transition from paleoindian to archaic transition?

-shift how ppl adapted to environment more reliance and smaller animals and plants compared to big game -new evidence for food cooking and processing reduced evidence of mobility -systematic burial of the dead

Compare technology in paleoindian and archaic period

-simple technology in paleoindian -more complexity in archaic period, more variety, you see ground stone tools, fishing equipment, bows and arrows

What is pedra furada?

-site in brazil -have rock art here which is hard to date -in 50,000 year old age -stone tools are argued to not be stone tools and your site is not a site -person who found the site got defensive

What is pilauco

-site in chile -there was another human footprint here from 16,500 years ago -might of gotten to chile by boat along the coast

Who is Jean luc picard

-skeletal evidence coroner thought it looked too old to be murder case so they pass it to forensic expert thinking it was from gold rush era (1800s) bc individual had no dental work -but when radio dated was from 9,000 years ago -skeleton reconstruct looked like patrick stewart

What is monte verde

-small site in chile -has radio dates from at least 15,000 years ago -had animal meat here, wild potato, wooden artifacts, evidence for architecture, evidence of structures like tents, evidence of living spaces, and butchery of mastodon with cut marks and tools to do this, 3 human footprints

What is the topper site?

-south carolina -materials beneath clovis materials -but there is nothing to radiocarbon date here -so had to used luminescence a different technique -did this by seeing how long ago a foil surface was exposed to site, doesn't work well

What were the bigger changes during the archaic period?

-start to see regional patterns of material culture meaning localized variations in projectile point styles -for example clovis points look the same not much variation but in archaic period we see projectile points that are distinctive locally -this suggests that there are less movement of ppl, and not moving around sharing ideas as much

Why is the cerutti site heavily critisized?

-the guy who found it is a paleontologist and found many of these types of sites and said there are people there but has never been able to demonstrate it -it was found directly below area of highway construction which involves a lot of heavy machinery impacting the site dramatically which caused the damage we saw them today -no other butchered animal remains -there is evidence of bone being broken but no evidence for skinning or fleshing -no stone tools here, no flakes but the authors said they used bone tools that originated in africa -no clear evidence of humans being involved in site creation/destruction in ancient times

What results in refuse mounds

-the shift to riverine setting -there were sites with a lot of shell fish meaning ppl were processing them by the 1000s and a lot of carbonized nutshells like hickory nuts

What is the cerutti mastodon site?

-there is mastodon here: extinct variety of elephant -this mastodon had evidence of it being smashed open, ppl were doing this at this site so they can get access to bone marrow with big tools -ppl were in san diego 130,000 years ago

What do biological anthropologists argue?

-they argue that there is no such thing as race but there is just variations within races -but forensic anthropologists do recognize races

What was believed about the clovis culture?

-they crossed beringia bridge into north america -went from alaska --> US by ice free corridor -hunted megafauna into extinction

What happens after clovis in the west?

-we have folsom points -smaller than clovis points and the flute are a lot bigger -hunted bison and other animals

Where are clovis points found?

all around north america and similar points are found in south america -doesn't mean that the same people and culture used them

What is the ice free corridor

area between eastern and western glaciers connecting modern alaska and continental USA

Why did they choose the name clovis

called clovis bc found in clovis new mexico

What do skeletons older than 9000 years look like?

caucasoid rather than mongoloid -causes controversy -but hard to distinguish between closely related ppls from the bones

What is clovis?

earliest named paleoindian culture famous for distinctive spear points

What is glaciation and glacier?

enourmous ice sheets covering northern north america

What is biface?

flakes are taken off on both side on the clovis tools

What are megafauna?

giant ice age animals that are now extinct but were present during earliest occupation of the americas

what happens as you move through the archaic period

ppl are using a variety of different low ranked food production materials and going after plants that only produce a small amount of food at a time and modifying the environment so these things continue to produce

What is clovis?

recognized by a distinctive type of spearpoint, what is key about it is the base -looks like upside down u, right above that are flakes referred to as flute -this is a distinctive way of thinning the base of a spear point -used primarily 13,500 years ago

What are flintknappers and how are they related to solutreans?

stone tool makers -like to use exotic raw materials -would manufacture a preform which is smt that is not quite finished and they would make deposits of these things and come back to these at later times to work on -this is smt we see the solutrean in europe, france and spain -the clovis people did similar things, liked pretty stones that were not found locally and leave half finished artifacts and leave them in deposits

What do the kelp forests follow?

the coastlines of north america

What happened when they ran out of kelp forests to exploit?

they would have been in warmer water with different types of resources on land and water

What is paleoindian?

used to describe earliest people in the americas also referred to as paleoamerican

Are ppl still moving in archaic period?

yes but it is a lot more seasonal and there is scheduling of annual movements

How did they come across the north atlantic?

island hopping and following the coast -think a lot of north atlantic was frozen so think they just followed this coastline

What is beringia?

land mass connecting alaska and siberia caused by lower sea levels during glaciation

Which migration hypothesis is most likely?

might be a combination of both -maybe both ice free corridor and coastal routes are available

Where are clovis points more common eastern north america or western?

more common in eastern north america -interesting bc if folks came from siberia and went to alaska and down through alberta to get into US you would think there would be more in alaska, siberia and alberta but there are very few here