Fig. 3. A [test pit] being excavated in a [site] within the Richland Project. Note the square pit walls, and screening for [artifacts]. Many kinds of records are kept during digging.
THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF THE RICHLAND-CHAMBERS RESERVOIR
PREHISTORIC PAST
Recent studies suggest that humans have occupied North America for at least 20,000 years. These prehistoric Indians were the first people to live in North America, probably entering the New World first by way of a great land bridge between what is now Siberia and Alaska. True pioneers, they entered a vast land that had never before contained humans. Once in the New World, their culture developed over thousands of years into several successive stages and spread over the whole of North America and into South America. In the United States the development of prehistoric American Indian cultures is a fascinating story of a people’s increasingly complex culture and adaptations to the wealth of natural resources offered by our continent. Since this development occurred before these people developed systems of writing, their history is available to us only through [archaeology] and other sciences. Without an effort to understand this story, the history of a whole people will disappear without record.
The peopling of the New World represents a kind of huge laboratory for understanding how human societies develop over long periods of time. Since the first people in North America entered a new land that did not contain human competitors except themselves, we can study the development of their culture over thousands of years in a relatively simple frame of analysis. Archaeologists currently recognize four basic culture stages of prehistoric Indian development in North America. These stages are represented, in varying ways and degrees, by the [archaeology] of the Richland-Chambers project.
The Paleo-Indian Stage
(18,000 to 8000 B.C.)
Since 1925, when flint spear points were found embedded in the bones of a kind of long-extinct bison, scientists have known that Native Americans lived in this country for tens-of-thousands of years. We call these people the “Paleo” Indians, after the Greek word for ancient, to refer to the oldest inhabitants of this continent. Intriguing as these people are, however, we understand little about them because we have found few traces of their habitations. The most distinctive trait of these people is chipped stone spear points with characteristic “flutes,” or long flake scars, on their surfaces (probably helping to lash the spear point to a shaft). These are unlike anything made by their descendants over the thousands of years to follow. Beautifully made, these [artifacts] are obviously stone tools of hunters, who depended on their weapons for a livelihood ([Figure 4]).
At first, it appears that the population grew slowly in the newly-inhabited continent of North America. The people in this period were apparently nomadic, frequently moving in search of game animals, seasonal plant foods and raw materials. Since there were not many of them, and they moved frequently, they did not leave many remains for the [archaeologist] to find. In the project area, only the base portion of a fluted point has been found but this [artifact] is an unmistakable but faint clue to the presence of Paleo-Indian inhabitants. With further work, more evidence may come to light. As matters now stand, we understand little of these people’s economy, religion, society, settlement pattern and other things that made up their culture.
