Kinship, demography, and Paleoindian modes of colonization: Some western Canadian perspectives

Abstract

Despite the centrality of kin concepts in the development of much anthropological theory, Paleoindian colonization is often simplistically modeled as biological population fissioning or with unwarranted assumptions about social organization and demographic parameters. Yet, Paleoindian people were undoubtedly aware of critical options for managing the sociogeographic boundary at which marriages could occur where small group sizes and extremely low population densities prevailed. Plausible thought models for a common category of kin structures that could have entered the New World can be developed quite readily. These models allow meaningful inferences about Paleoindian kinship, with profound implications for our understanding of the earliest stages of New World prehistory, both at regional and continental scales. Such models can serve to stimulate alternative explanations with test implications for enigmatic aspects of the Paleoindian record, including differential demographic success for colonization episodes, shifting modes of colonization, the kin-structuring of economic options, and social dimensions signaled by the spread of fluted point technology.