Technology, Mobility, and Adaptation Among Early Foragers of the Southern Northwest Coast: The View from Indian Sands, Southern Oregon Coast, USA

Abstract

The archaeological record of North America’s earliest Pacific Coast peoples provides critical information relevant to questions of the timing, mode, and manner of the peopling of the New World. This observation is relevant whether or not the first New World peoples migrated along a coastal or interior (“ice-free corridor”) route. At the very least, our knowledge of late Pleistocene and early Holocene-aged human occupation in North America’s coastal zones is important for its comparative value with other global records of coastal adaptations. Current knowledge about late Pleistocene-aged human occupation of the Northwest Coast of North America is limited to only a handful of sites bearing archaeological assemblages typically comprised of only a few artifacts.