Early Technological Organization Along the Eastern Pacific Rim of the New World: A Co-Continental View

Abstract

In this chapter, we address the current understanding of Late Pleistocene subsistence technology along the New World Pacific Coast. Artifact assemblages from these early coastal sites are here viewed as remnant components of more complete living technological systems. Many scholars investigating the Peopling of the New World have understandably focused their attentions on faunal remains, radiocarbon dates, and paleoenvironmental reconstructions. While clearly necessary, interpretation of early coastal human behavior, which limits itself to the study of these elements alone, leads to an ipso facto deterministic set of models to explain the initial peopling of New World Pacific coast. This determinism springs from the fact that a narrow examination of ecofactual data and the subsequent application of ecological explanatory models can potentially lead to circular reasoning, despite the demonstrated effectiveness of these models in many situations. A more explicit focus on those categories of data formed intentionally through (as opposed to being incidental byproducts of) human action will provide a perspective on the earliest archaeological record of the Americas that could be integrated with a range of different theoretical approaches.