Chapter 13: Archaeology
The period is subdivided into three traditions based on differences in projectile point style:
1) Clovis (12,000 - 10,000 years ago) 2) Folsom (11,000 - 10,000 years ago) 3) Plano (10,000 - 8,000 years ago)
COMING TO AMERICA: Beringia was a land bridge roughly
1,000 miles (1,600 km) north to south at its greatest extent, which joined present-day Alaska and eastern Siberia across the Bering Strait at various times during the Pleistocene ice ages
The Plano Period is well represented in Manitoba between
10,000 and 8,000 years ago. At this time glaciers and the waters of Lake Agassiz were retreating allowing for migration into new areas, increases in population size, and greater stability of habitation. Most sites occur on the prairies, within the Western Plano phase, during which early Native peoples initiated a tradition of bison hunting that remained important throughout the period of early European contact. Separate Northern Plano and Eastern Plano cultures exploited caribou and mixed prairie and forest resources, respectively
COMING TO AMERICA: According to geologists, conditions were right for ancient humans and herd animals to traverse Beringia between
11,000 and 25,000 years ago. Though this land bridge would also have been open between 40,000 and 75,000 years ago, there is no evidence that conclusively confirms human migration at these earlier dates. As with the Sahul (discussed in the last unit), early dates open the possibility of spread to the Americas by archaic Homo.
The Mesolithic in European prehistoric period begins about
12,000 years ago
The Palaeoindian Period (12,000 - 8,000 years ago) is the earliest well documented era of human activity in North America. It began approximately
12,000 years ago, and most archaeologists attribute its development to the Aboriginal discoverers of North America, who migrated over the Bering land bridge that once connected Alaska and Siberia. These early inhabitants are widely identified by the appearance of similar technologies and subsistence patterns throughout the continent.
COMING TO AMERICA: Although ancient Siberians did indeed spread eastward, it is now clear that massive glaciers blocked their way until at least
13,000 years ago
COMING TO AMERICA: Securely dated objects from Monte Verde, a site in southcentral Chile, place people in southern South America by
14,500 years ago, if not earlier
COMING TO AMERICA: Assuming the first populations spread from Siberia to Alaska, linguist Johanna Nichols suggests that the first people to arrive in North America did so by
20,000 years ago. She bases this estimate on the time it took various other languages to spread from their homelands - including Eskimo languages in the Arctic and Athabaskan languages from interior western Canada to New Mexico and Arizona. - Nichols's conclusion is that it would have taken at least 7,000 years for people to reach south-central Chile
COMING TO AMERICA: Others suggest people arrived in the Americas closer to
30,000 years ago or even earlier.
The first settlement of the New World most likely occurred between:
40,000 and l2,000 years ago
Archaic period: The cultural phases and traditions within this period developed between
8,000 and 2,000 years ago. The earliest cultural evidence in the Manitoba region dates from 5,500 years ago. The relatively late Archaic settlement in the Province may be due to drought conditions across the Plains. Once the climate improved, populations increased substantially and for the first time extended into the Arctic zone along the Hudson Bay coast.
COMING TO AMERICA: yet a third study suggests three waves of migration across
Beringia
COMING TO AMERICA: Climatic patterns during the Ice Age kept this land bridge, known as
Beringia or the Bering Land Bridge, relatively ice free and covered instead with lichens and mosses that could support herds of grazing animals. It is possible that Upper Palaeolithic peoples could have come to the Americas simply by following herd animals.
Archaeologists have noted the similarities in development among the different continents and have coined the term
Broad Spectrum Revolution to mark this important phase in technological and historical development.
Which of the following describes the primary difference between the diet of people in Northern and Western Europe and those in the Near East?
Diet in the Near East included more wild plant foods.
TRUE OR FALSE: There is clear evidence implicating humans in the extinction of many species of New World animals at the end of the Pleistocene
False
Plano extended from the
Keewatin District of the Northwest Territories to the Gulf of Mexico. Subsistence activities were focused primarily on hunting and were widely dependent upon the modern bison herds, which were replacing the larger, long horned forms. Adaptations to regional environmental conditions allowed Plano groups to expand their distribution from the Plains northward into the subarctic to specialize in caribou hunting and eastward into the forest areas, where they exploited diverse woodland species, including moose, small mammals and fish.
COMING TO AMERICA: It is believed that a small human Paleoindian population of at most a few thousand survived the
Last Glacial Maximum in Beringia, isolated from its ancestor populations in Asia for at least 5,000 years, before expanding to populate the Americas sometime after 16,500 years ago.
Sites like Ohalo II demonstrate that some food-collecting communities experienced economic changes as long ago as the Last Glacial Maximum, which led to
The use of a wide range of wild plants and animals as food
COMING TO AMERICA: Another study suggests back and forth exchanges between
Siberia and North America
The Plano tradition (10,000 - 8,000 years ago)
The Late Palaeoindian Period is represented in many areas of North America by the Plano tradition. Palaeo cultures shared a distinctive method of chipping stone that produced artifacts that differed from the fluted points of the earlier phases. However, other cultural elements, such as tool kits items, settlement patterns and subsistence practices retained characteristics of previous traditions.
COMING TO AMERICA: Cultural evidence
about 12,000 years ago, to the distinctive fluted spear points of Palaeoindian hunters of big game, such as mammoths, mastodons, caribou, and now extinct forms of bison. - Fluted points are finely made, with large channel flakes removed from one or both surfaces. This thinned section was inserted into the notched end of a spear shaft for a sturdy haft. Fluted points are found from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Coast, and from Alaska down into Panama.
The Archaic Period in the Americas was succeeded in many areas by the development of
agricultural technologies and subsistence systems .
Technologically, the Archaic is marked by the
appearance of tools used for grinding food. Milling stones, knowns as manos and metates, constitute the main form of these implements. They were used for processing gathered plant foods in the southern areas of North America (but none have been found in Manitoba, to date), which constituted an increasingly important part of the diet. Hunting technologies depended upon a variety of broad bladed stemmed, notched or barbed projectile points, considerably smaller than those of the Palaeoindian Period. They were crafted for use with the atlatl, which came into wide use during this time.
Palaeoindian cultures: general specialized in
big game hunting following a pattern similar to that of the Upper Palaeolithic Period in Europe - Subsistence patterns in both regions depended upon vast expanses of open grasslands under ice age climatic conditions
Clovis points are found in association with the
bones of Ice Age animals in sites in many areas of North America and document both the importance of big game hunting and the effectiveness of early Palaeoindian weaponry.
In the southwestern corner of Manitoba, some habitable land had been freed from the
ce and allowed sporadic settlement of peoples within the spruce forests of the time. They left only faint traces of their occupation in the form of beautifully crafted Clovis points. Only a handful of these points have been found in Manitoba. They were made of Knife River flint, which was probably quarried in western North Dakota. The rarity of points and absence of other artifacts or signs of settlement suggest the presence of small groups who made only infrequent visits to the province. While there is no local evidence to suggest the settlement or social forms of Clovis groups, their dependence on prevailing migrations of mammoth herds must have involved travel over long distances.
The driving force behind the transition from Upper Palaeolithic to Mesolithic lifeways was likely a change in
climate, especially the ending of the Pleistocene ice ages and a shift to much warmer conditions that marked the beginning of the Holocene
The driving force behind the transition from Palaeoindian to Archaic life ways was most likely a change in
climate, particularly a shift to much warmer and dryer conditions beginning approximately 10,000 years ago. To compensate for the loss of their traditional food sources, Native peoples invented new survival strategies and increased their exploitation of a broad variety of small mammals, waterfowl, fish and plants. This new pattern has been called the "Broad Spectrum Revolution" and typifies not only the North American Archaic, but also the European Mesolithic and the African Later Stone Age, which represent similar responses to ecological changes that were occurring on a worldwide scale.
Western Plano peoples hunted bison both
communally and individually depending on seasonal conditions - Summers were spent on the grasslands where groups organized communal hunts employing bison "jumps". This technique involved stampeding herds over cliffs, river terraces and valley walls. In the fall hunters moved to the bison wintering ground in the better wooded and sheltered areas before the animals arrived in order to prepare kill sites at rivers and creeks where bison were known to cross
The Plano projectile points serve as
cultural and temporal indicators of the period. They come in a variety of forms including stemmed and lanceolate shapes that vary according to different regions and cultural traditions.
The Folsom tradition (11,000 - 10,000 years ago)
culture appeared and slowly replaced the Clovis ways of life. Their major source of subsistence was herds of giant, long horned bison
the narrative of how the Americas were peopled is still being
debated
A second major trend of the Mesolithic was the
development of distinctly local cultural traditions
Mesolithic assemblages show
distinct unique characteristics within more narrowly defined geographic zones. This trend is, in part, due to the more intensive knowledge and use of localized resources that their new subsistence strategies required. It may also have marked a more distinct pattern of defining and distinguishing local groups and societies by the use of identifying cultural features, e.g., the particular style of an arrowhead.
For decades, the argument has been that the first people migrated into North America over
dry land that connected Siberia to Alaska. This land bridge was a consequence of the buildup of great continental glaciers. As the ice masses grew, there was a worldwide lowering of sea levels, resulting in the exposure of land in places like the Bering Strait where the ocean floor today is very shallow. In effect, Alaska became an eastward extension of Siberia
The Mesolithic in Europe and similar traditions in other parts of the world were widely replaced by the
farming and herding regimes of the Neolithic. Hunting and gathering lifeways are still present and vital in some areas of the contemporary world and provide us with insights into a critical period of human prehistory.
Subsistence changes during the Mesolithic stimulated new
patterns of settlement and social organization. The major modification was a shift away from long distance migrations that depended on the movements of herds
Hunting weapons reflect
reduced size and increased accuracy that would have been required to hunt birds and small mammals
Archaic period: The more intensive exploitation of local environments also stimulated a change in
settlement patterns towards greater sedentism, i.e., more prolonged use of individual living sites and, in some cases, permanent occupation. The increased localization and ecological specialization of the period supported the development of several distinctive cultural traditions within and across major geographical zones.
Palaeoindian cultures are represented in many regions by the predominance of
skillfully crafted stone spearheads, such as the fluted Clovis and Folsom points
Microliths
small stone flakes that are set in other media to produce composite tools - This is a small stone flake that is produced from a standard blade by breaking it up into small fragments. - These small blades are then retouched to form tooth-like components that are set into wood or other media to create composite tools.
Mesolithic technologies indicate substantive modifications related to the change in
subsistence orientation
Palaeolithic sites show broad similarities in
technology and uniform cultural features over wide regions
The earliest tool type associated with the Palaeoindian period is:
the Clovis point
The technology and subsistence patterns of the earliest Americans were most similar to which European period?
the Upper Palaeolithic
Basic types of Microlith include
the bow-and-arrow, harpoons with multiple tiny stone points and barbs, and sickles inset with microlith 'teeth'.
The Manitoba Archaic is marked by several different
traditions that varied according to regional and local peculiarities. Numerous cultures developed including Oxbow, McKean, Pelican Lake and Shield Archaic. Pre-Dorset peoples pioneered the settlement of the Arctic lands on Hudson Bay. One of the most unique cultures (Old Copper) involved imports of copper from Lake Superior. The metal was used to fashion projectile points and several other kinds of tools and implements.
New climates led to changes in
vegetation, which, along with increased pressure from highly effective hunting bands, led to the disappearance of many big game species
Palaeoindian cultures: subsistence
was almost exclusively based on hunting and gathering
Shaft straighteners are also called
wrenches
TRUE OR FALSE: The Holocene epoch beings around 11,000 years ago
True
TRUE OR FALSE: The earliest skeletons from the New World show greater biological diversity than do modern Native Americans.
True
COMING TO AMERICA: A recent genetic study using mitochondrial and nuclear DNA indicates that the American Indian Upper Palaeolithic peoples separated from Asian peoples prior to
- 40,000 years ago and occupied Beringia for about 20,000 years with little population growth - Population size then expanded again as these peoples crossed Beringia between 15,000 and 17,000 years ago but then took different paths -One group traveled down the Pacific Coast and the other down the centre of the continent. Although the dates generated in this study are as early as others have suggested, these findings support the notion that distinct groups made separate migrations.
When the remains of Kennewick Man were first discovered in 1996, anthropologists who studied the skull were convinced that the remains belonged to someone of European descent because of certain characteristic traits (Craniometric data)
- It wasn't until the remains were dated to approximately 8,500 years old and a distinctive stone point was found embedded in the hip of the skeleton that the interpretation of the ancestry of the individual had to be reconsidered. - Similarly, the cranial anatomy of a mummy recovered from Spirit Cave in Nevada, dated to about 9,400 years ago, is very distinctively different from modern Native American peoples and far more likely to come from an Ainu lineage. - The remains of 81 individuals recovered from the Lagoa Santa site in central Brazil also seem to support the notion that a group of Southeast Asian migrants arrived on the American continent much earlier than the Siberian group. - Again, when anthropologists studied the cranial morphology of these individuals they found features characteristic of Melanesian individuals and not the ones that would suggest the remains belonged to "Amerindians"
The Mesolithic in European prehistoric periodis marked by the
- extensive production and use of microliths - it also involved the development of new food acquisition strategies based upon the intensive hunting of small game and collection of plants. A similar change in subsistence base seems to have occurred in a roughly coordinated fashion on a worldwide basis
The Clovis tradition (12,000 - 10,000 years ago)
- takes its name from the town in New Mexico where the striking stone projectile point characteristic of the tradition was first found - Its distinctive characteristics include a central groove, or flute, along both of its faces and finely worked edges. The typical blade measures 10-13 cm in length by 4 cm in width and was produced by a combination of percussion and pressure flaking - The fluting allowed hafting to a wooden spear shaft to make a formidable weapon. These points have been found in every region of North America south of the retreating glaciers that had dominated the continent.
1st possibility of how people first came to America
- the first Americans may have come by boat or rafts, perhaps traveling between islands or ice-free pockets of coastline, from as far away as the Japanese islands and down North America's northwestern coast. - Hints of such voyages are provided by a handful of North American skeletons that bear a closer resemblance to the aboriginal Ainu people of northern Japan and their forebears than they do to other Asians or contemporary Indigenous groups. - Unfortunately, because sea levels were lower than they are today, coastal sites used by early migrants would now be under water.
The first Manitobans were probably a
Clovis group who followed migrating animal herds into Southwest Manitoba during a period of glacial retreat. They faced a climate of Arctic temperatures throughout much of the year and vast expanses of glacial ice. At the foot of the glacier, ponded meltwater formed Lake Agassiz, which was fully drained by about 7,500 years ago.
The Folsom tool kit maintained many of the characteristics of the previous
Clovis tradition. The new projectile points had thinner blades and were smaller, possibly in response to the efficiencies of bison hunting or to facilitated hafting to a spear point. Folsom points may also have been a response to the advent of a new weapon. Although direct evidence is lacking, some archaeologists believe that the atlatl, or spear thrower, was introduced to the New World around this time. More Folsom points than Clovis points have been found in Manitoba, but they are still concentrated in the southwest, coinciding with the northerly range of bison distribution.
The Archaic Period (8,000 - 2,000 years ago)
The Archaic Period marked the extensive development of new technologies and subsistence patterns in many parts of North America. It is divided into the Eastern Archaic Tradition and the Western Archaic or Desert Tradition of the Great Basin, both of which had an influence on Manitoba. Although technologically and stylistically different from the European Mesolithic, the Archaic expresses similar subsistence patterns that suggest common adaptations to the same environment changes that accompanied the end of the Pleistocene ice ages.
soft organic tools made from sources such as bone and antler also became more
numerous and complex
Palaeoindian cultures: major food sources
herds of mammoth, mastodons, giant bison and other megafauna, many of which became extinct at the close of this era of human occupation.
Clovis tools were usually made from
high quality stone, such as chert and obsidian, quarried at locations as far as several hundred kilometers from habitation sites.
To compensate for the disappearance of their traditional food sources
human groups invented new survival strategies and increased their exploitation of a broad variety of small mammals, waterfowl, fish and plants.
The climate changed between 12,000 and 11,000 ya by
increasing in temperature and increasing in precipitation
species exploited to Clovis points included
mammoths, which grazed on tundra grasses and mastodons that browsed on spruce needles within stands of spruce forest that covered many areas. Giant, long horned bison provided a secondary food source. Mammoths were utilized not only for food, but also for their tusks and massive bones, which were worked in much the same fashion as stone to form a variety of tools and implements.
Hunter-gatherers in Western North America, particularly the Great Basin, tended to focus on what environmental feature in addition to upland resources?
marshes
The main stone form during the Mesolithic period is
microlith
Groups during the Mesolithic period were primarily
nomadic, but probably travelled over shorter distances and some cultures developed some long-term semi-permanent settlements. There are even a few pre-agricultural village sites in a handful of eastern Mediterranean locations. These trends would have been supported by the broad spectrum hunting, fishing and gathering regime of the period, which capitalized on the intensive harvest of many different wild food sources within a particular area.
