Settling into the Younger Dryas: Human Behavioral Adaptations During the Pleistocene to Holocene Transition in the Midsouth United States

This dissertation investigates the evolution of Paleoindian adaptations during the Pleistocene to Holocene transition in the Midsouth United States. Evidence suggests that lithic technologies became more regionalized over time as territorial ranges constricted and people relied increasingly on locally available resources. Following a brief introduction to the issues related to Paleoindian adaptations in Chapter one, I evaluate the evidence for pre-Clovis occupation at the Coats-Hines-Litchy site, in Tennessee. I conclude that based on analyses of geochronology, site formation processes, and the lithic assemblage, the site likely predates human occupation of North America, the faunal assemblage is naturally produced, and the artifact assemblage has been redeposited from other nearby sites. I next present a lithic analysis charactering the range of variation and reduction sequence of Cumberland fluted bifaces from the Midsouth. I contend that standardization of basal elements reflect hafting requirements, and patterns of biface morphology, breakage, and resharpening reflect that Cumberland bifaces were designed specifically for piercing rather than to be multifunctional. I then compare Clovis, Cumberland, and Dalton biface technologies from Tennessee to investigate the evolution of Paleoindian adaptations during the Pleistocene to Holocene transition. I show that temporal changes in technological organization, landscape use, and toolstone selection reflect settling in processes associated with landscape learning rather than Younger Dryas-related environmental changes. Ultimately, this dissertation presents new data related to the late Pleistocene occupation of the Midsouth and the evolution of regional Paleoindian adaptations. By recognizing temporal and spatial changes in late Pleistocene technologies, and considering those changes in relation to paleoecological records, we are better suited to understand Paleoindian adaptations. In turn, we are able to construct more robust and accurate settlement models to explain the peopling of the Americas

Evaluating Claims of Early Human Occupation at Chiquihuite Cave, Mexico

Archaeologists working in Mexico recently claimed evidence for pre-Last Glacial Maximum human occupation in the Americas, based on lithic items excavated from Chiquihuite Cave, Zacatecas. Although they provide extensive array of ancillary studies of the cave's chronostratigraphic and paleoenvironmental record, the data they present do not support their central argument, that these lithic items are anthropogenic and represent a unique lithic industry produced by early human occupants. They give limited consideration to the most plausible alternative explanation: that the assemblage is a product of natural processes of disintegration, roof fall, and mass movement of the cave fill, and thus the lithic materials are best explained as geofacts. We assess the evidence by considering the alternative hypotheses (1) that the observed phenomena are artifacts or (2) that they result from natural processes. We conclude that hypothesis 2 is more strongly supported and that Chiquihuite Cave does not represent evidence for the earliest Americans.18 month embargo; published online: 23 October 2021This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

Current Understanding of the Earliest Human Occupations in the Americas: Evaluation of Becerra-Valdivia and Higham (2020)

Various chronologies of the earliest Native American occupations have been proposed with varying levels of empirical support and conceptual rigor, yet none is widely accepted. A recent survey of pre-Clovis dated sites (Becerra-Valdivia and Higham 2020) concludes a pre-Last Glacial Maximum (>26,500–19,000 cal yr BP) entry of humans in the Americas, in part based on recent work at Chiquihuite Cave, Mexico. We evaluate the evidence used to develop this inference. To provide clarity, we present three explicit dispersal models for the earliest human dispersals to the Americas: Strict Clovis-First (13,050 cal yr BP), Paleoindian (16,000 cal yr BP, encompassing pre-LGM, preferred by Becerra-Valdivia and Higham (2020)), and we summarize the current genetic and archaeological evidence bearing on each. We regard all purported Pre-Paleoindian sites as equivocal and the Strict Clovis-First model to be equally unsupported at present. We conclude that current data strongly support the Paleoindian Dispersal model, with Native American ancestors expanding into the Americas sometime after 16,000 cal yr BP (and perhaps after 14,800 cal yr BP), consistent with well-dated archaeological sites and with genetic data throughout the western hemisphere. Models of the Americas’ peopling that incorporate Chiquihuite or other claimed Pre-Paleoindian sites remain unsubstantiated.18 month embargo; published online: 23 October 2021This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]