Paleoindian archaeology

Abstract

Despite the discovery of Paleoindian sites east of the Mississippi River, the stratigraphic and temporal establishment of the Early Paleoindian Clovis and Middle Paleoindian Folsom sequence west of the Mississippi River has been a standard by which other Paleoindian sites in the Americas have been judged. This is particularly true of Clovis sites in the Desert Southwest because they are viewed as evidence of the founding human populations, at least regionally, and because western archaeologists were first to establish a regional chronostratigraphy and geoclimatic model of the Southwestern US (Bryan and Albritton, 1943; Bryan, 1950; Antevs, 1954, 1962a,b; Haynes, 1971, 1982, 1984, 1990, 1991, 1993; Haynes et al., 1999). Following Kirk Bryan and Ernst Antevs, C. Vance Haynes has dedicated much of his professional career fine-tuning the geoclimatic evidence gathered from Paleoindian sites in the Southwest. These researchers were the first to develop a regionally based chronology that placed stratigraphy and environmental data in time. The resulting chronostratigraphy and geoclimatic data have played a vital role in the interpretation of the Southwestern Paleoindian cultural development. In short, it is the strength of the Southwestern approach that has been lacking elsewhere in the Americas. However, it would be inappropriate to adopt the regionalized data from the Southwest in order to impose it in a different geographic region; for example the Southeast US. The patterns of climate, habitat, and human occupation should be evaluated on their own merits keeping in mind the likelihood of distinct regional differences. It is from this perspective that the Paleoindian components at the Page-Ladson site are discussed.