From the Glacial to the Archaic
The record of early man in North America may be dealt with on five levels, each overlapping another. The most recent is sometimes called the Archaic Period—the stage before native civilizations took shape—and it lies outside the range of early man as we define him. The earliest of the other four levels is the most significant and the least known. We have no suitable name for this period, which stretches back from about 15,000 years ago into the very dim past. It may have begun early in the last glacial age or even in the third interglacial; this would take our earliest man back 50,000 to 100,000 years. There are no firm dates for this. The best we have is a radiocarbon estimate of 30,000 years ago, when man may have killed dwarf elephants on an island off the coast of California.
Let us start with some dates and associations that follow the end of that mysterious first level 15,000 years ago, and carry us up to the brink of the Archaic. Let us then go back to the few hazy glimpses we now have of the very beginnings of man in the Americas.
We must start with the fluted points of Clovis. They may range from 10,000 to 15,000 years back—more likely 11,000 to 13,000. It is still uncertain whether the shouldered points of Sandia fit into this time span or precede it. For various technical reasons, we must throw out a date of more than 37,000 years ago for Clovis points from Lewisville, Texas, and a date of 8,500 at the Lehner site in Arizona. Points remarkably like those from the Clovis-type site appear in such places as Bull Brook, Massachusetts,[74] and Alaska,[75] but dating is either lacking or insecure, and a 10,000- to 15,000-year age may not agree comfortably with other geological or cultural associations. Archaeologists have been tempted to associate this horizon with the hunting of mammoths.[76]
The Folsom period is next, and fairly well dated. The span of time during which these classic fluted points were made seems to fall mainly between 9,000 and 11,000 years ago. The most noted big game of the Folsom hunters was Bison antiquus.[77]
The remaining stage of these “middle” levels may be identified—most arbitrarily—as the Eden, or parallel-flaked, point horizon. Fluting of projectile points still occurs, but the distinctive and exceptional feature is the beautiful pressure-flaking illustrated on [page 155]. Other types of projectile points include Gypsum, Plainview, Scottsbluff, Lime Creek, Angostura, and perhaps Agate Basin. The time span seems to be from perhaps 7,000 to about 10,000 years ago. The makers of these points also tended to be bison hunters. Bison occidentalis may have been the chief game,[78] although there continues occasional association with B. antiquus, and there begins an identification with B. bison, the “buffalo” of Plains Indians in recent times.
In the two thousand years following the Folsom climax—that is, from about 7,000 to 9,000 years ago—notable transitions occurred in the technologies and economies of early man. Handsome projectile points became noticeably diversified in shape, and perhaps in size. Many continued to be made with a superb craftsmanship that persisted to historic times. Economically, as we shall see in [the next chapter], there was a major shift of emphasis. This was due in large part to the great extinction of Pleistocene mammals, which was in progress by 8,000 years ago and essentially completed 5,000 years ago. During this time, the era of specialized big-game hunters came to a close. The human populations that survived seem to have turned their attentions to the generalized hunting of lesser game. Their economies were first augmented by, and then focused upon, food collecting. For many groups, such as the Indians of central California, exploitation of wild seeds and nuts became a specialized and satisfactory means of subsistence in a climate whose wet winters and dry summers severely limited agriculture. Elsewhere, seed collecting was replaced by plant domestication—an important first step—then by plant cultivation and ultimately by agriculture. Of these late trends in American prehistory, the scope of this book allows us to touch on only the Cochise cultures and other seed-collecting traditions of apparent antiquity.