Archaic Period

Archaic Period

About 11,000 - 12,000 years ago, the North American climate began to change. Exactly why and how this happened is still debated, but the change coincides with the catastrophic extinction of the big-game animals at the end of the Ice Age. The continental ice sheets were withdrawing and the melt-water from them filled valleys and basins, while the shorelines of the continents began to change as the then existing continental shelves came to be drowned by rising sea levels.

With the end of the Ice Age, world climate warmed up rapidly, environments changed drastically, the size and distribution of woodlands, prairies, river floodplains, deserts, deciduous and evergreen forests changed markedly, and a great diversity of local environments evolved. These new climatic and geographic conditions altered plant and animal life. There was a relatively sudden disappearance of many types of animals most of which were the so-called megafauna, or large mammals, such as the mastodons, mammoths, giant ground sloths, and other large-bodied herbivores. As these animals became extinct, so too did many of the carnivores that preyed upon them - the Alaskan lion, the saber-toothed cats, and the dire wolf, to name a few. Other species did not become extent, but underwent rapid selection for smaller forms. For example, the giant bison of the late Ice Age was replaced around 12,000 years ago by forms directly ancestral to the modern bison.

Exactly why these animals died out is subject to debate. At one time, some scientists argued that the ancestral American Indians of the Paleo-Indian period hunted these animals into extinction. But today such an hypothesis receives little support. Instead, modern scientists point to a period of rapid global warming at the end of the Ice Age. As the climate changed, sea levels rose, growing seasons became longer, and snowfall and annual precipitation decreased significantly. While many smaller animals could adapt to these shifitng conditions by modifying their ranges, the larger ones, placing greater demands on their environments, could not cope with the transforming world and were pushed beyond the brink to extinction.

In response to the changing world, the ancestral American Indians began to change their subsistence patterns, ultimately leading to increasingly more and more efficient and successful in exploiting a wide variety of resources. People still followed a seasonally migratory way of life and still depended on gathering and hunting, but their cultures were richer, technologically more advanced, and much more versatile than those of most of the Paleo-Indian period societies. This period which is ushered in by the end of the Ice Age and characterized by societies evolving a multitude of adaptive stratiegies to the stresses engendered by the end of the Ice Age is known as the Archaic.

Since archaic cultures evolved from Paleo-Indian ones it is often impossible to draw a sharp boundary between the two periods, especially since some cultural practices remained the same: a seasonally migratory way of life, gathering and hunting as the primary subsistence pattern. Yet important differences arose: people made new kinds of tools (especially tools for processing hard seeds and nuts, as well as baskets, nets, and fishing and birding tools), developed new techniques for making and using already existing tools, invented new ways of articulating with varied environments (both natural and social). During the Archaic period we see the first evidence of many significant cultural developments among the native peoples including far-flung regional trade networks (allowing for the exchange of raw materials, food items, exotic goods), the invention of a broad range of subsistence technologies and tools, the rise of part-time (and later full-time) occupational specialization. Unlike the lifeway that characterized the Paleo-Indian societies, with relatively few types of subsistence and settlement patterns and settlement locals, the Archaic period witnessed the blooming and profusion of many different lifeways and a spreading out across the North American continent and a filling in of virtually every environmental zone and microenvironment.

The subsistence focus was characterized by wide, if selective, exploitation of the environment whether the environment was difficult, as in the deserts, or lush and inviting, as along the coasts and by wide estuaries, where the bounty of aquatic resources and waterfowl enabled them to live comfortable lives. In each region, people developed specialized knowledge of local resources and how to exploit them. Hence, tools became more diversified for more varied purposes and cultures tended to diversify and many regional specializations arose. In some areas of North America, the alterations people made to the changing world were relatively minor, while in other regions the alterations were dramatic.

In some areas people simply intensified already existing subsistence practices; in other areas people were forced to shift from hunting large game to taking medium and small game, supplimented by a wider range of plant foods; in in still other regions, fish and shellfish, along with a wide variety of plants, became the staple foods. In some regions, sea mammal hunting and fishing became a major focus while in interior locations dietary patterns emphasize little in the way of animal food, but a heavy reliance upon wild plants, especially the seeds and roots, as well as a wide variety of insects and reptiles. But despite these regional differences in specific resources, the trend in subsistence patterns was toward a more extensive use of plants and animals.

In most areas of North America people shifted their subsistence practices to a primary emphasis on vegetable foods, combined with hunting of smaller animals (squirrels, deer, rabbits), and in especially hosptiable areas, collecting shellfish, fishing, and taking of sea mammals. Once such area was the southern California coast where small bands blended fishing with marine mammal hunting as early as 8000 years ago. Another favorable area was the eastern woodlands where the people exploited a broad variety of foods including nuts, seed-bearing grasses, small game, and along the coast and rivers, fish and shellfish. This broad-spectrum gathering and hunting way of life lasted in some regions of North America into the middle and late 19th century.

And accompanying this expansion of the subsistence base was a reduction in the size of the territory within which specific groups ranged over in search of food. The changes in the subsistence patterns led to changes in other cultural patterns. As a result, individual groups of people began to differentiate from each other according to the specific regions they settled in - the archaic period people were evolving into a multitude of more complex gathering and hunting cultures, with no one cultural pattern predominating.

A Diffuse Econony

Unlike their forebears who tended to concentrate on just a few widely distributed species of plants and animals, the Archaic people made use of a great many kinds of resources, with no one or two being the single most important ones. Not only did the Archaic people diversify their subsistence base, but they also shifted the focus toward a greater reliance on plants for food, craft materials, and medicine so that towards the end of the Archaic period (about 5,000 - 4,000 years ago) hundreds of plant species were being exploited. However, there is no evidence to suggest that resources were gathered and saved for use late in the year. Instead, they were used when and where available.

Seasonal Round

Also, unlike their Paleo-Indian ancestors, who tended to restrict themselves to exploiting resources in just a few econiches, the Archaic folks learned how to exploit resources in many different environments, scheduling their movements to correspond with the seasonal availability of resources. In other words, camps were moved from one environment to another as part of a carefully scheduled seasonal round. In some parts of the state the annual round consisted of simply moving uphill or down with the seasons, spending the winter in a camp at lower elevations, migrating in the spring to the hills where they would remain until fall, when they returned to their base camp. This allowed people to reach several different ecozones when its most important seasonal resources were available.

Adaptations to Local Environments

Specialized Technology

Exploiting many different kinds of resources was made possible by the development of a specialized technology. In addition to the tool types of their forebears, the Archaic period folks created entirely new kinds of tools and technologies. Of the many technological achievements which helped Archaic societies exploit many new niches and perform subsistence tasks more efficiently, three stand out: the making of baskets, the production of milling tools, and the increasing technological sophistication of their hunting and fishing tools and techniques.

Baskets.

Milling Stones. Just as Just as baskets played an important role in Archaic and later cultures, so too did milling stones. Made of stone that was shaped by pecking and abrading rather than by flaking, these tools took two basic forms: the mortar and pestle, and the milling stone and mano, or handstone. Mortars (see image at right) and pestles were used primarily for pounding nuts, small seeds, acorns, and the bodies of small animals; the milling stone and handstone for grinding hard seeds. Millingstones appeared earlier and were more numerous than mortars and pestles until the Formative Period when acorn processing grew in importance. In addition to portable millingstones (if a 75 - 100 pound mortar can be called portable!), by the end of the Archaic some communities began to make additional mortars and milling surface on large rock outcrops, usually at campsites near oak groves and streams. Some of these bedrock milling stations are truly monumental. In California, at Chaw'se Indian Grinding Rock State Historic Park, located in the hilly and wooded Sierra Nevada foothills, is an outcropping of marbelized limestone with 1,185 mortar, holes, the largest concentration of bedrock mortars in North America. Undoubtedly, such features served as the hub of village life, a gathering place where women could relay news while they ground the day's acorn meal.

Although many of the innovations of the Archaic emphasize the importance of plants, other subsistence technologies also became more specialized. Hunters developed a wide array of new and innovative tools which increased the amount of animal protein in Archaic diets. New fishing tools, such as pronged spears, nets, toggles, hooks, and basketry traps, were developed. Specialized nets, looking something like tennis nets, were used during communial rabbit drives. Various nets and snares were used to take birds while large game animals were hunted using a spear-thrower.

Increasing Social Complexity

As every archaeologist knows, attempting to reconstruct the non-material aspects of an ancient society's cultural lifeways is, at best, a difficult task. This is so because so much of what makes up a society's culture are not things (tools, houses, grave goods, etc.) but the rules, thoughts, behaviors, and interpersonal relationships that produced the things. Consequently, archaeologists must rely upon other methods to reconstruct past cultural lifeways. One fruitful technique in some parts of North America is the use of ethnographic analogies, which involves the analysis of the material culture of historically known societies to learn the relationships between present-day cultural behavior patterns and material by-products that could be discovered archaeologically. Beginning with a well-recorded historical culture, the archaeologist works by progressive stages through time, using the modern culture an an analog to explain what's found in the archaeological record. Of course, the farther back one works, the more distant the relationship between the archaeological culture and the historic culture, and the more questionable the strength of one's reconstructions. Bearing this in mind, what can we say about the culture of Archaic Period societies?

The earliest Archaic cultures were not much different from those of the late Paleo-Indian Period, but between 6,000 and 4,000 years ago, a different lifestyle had emerged. The economy was much more productive so that permanent groups of 25-100 people could be maintained, forming bands. Larger and somewhat more complex than the micro-bands of earlier times, bands were composed of several nuclear families, perhaps linked patrilineally by common descent from a parent or grandparent. It's likely that a respected older individual acted as headperson of the band, leading discussions and acting as a mediator in disputes. Such an individual had no coercive power, but relied instead on charisma and respect accorded to the position of headperson.

Trade

Although the exchange of raw materials and finished artifacts occurred during Paleo-Indians times (as was the case at Monte Verde), it was at best irregular. It's not until the Archaic Period that we have first clear evidence of economic exchange. As populations moved into more and more ecological niches and societies became more complex, trade began to flourish, playing a role in the increase in population sizes and densitites and becoming an important factor in the transformation of Archaic cultures into different, more sophisticated forms. Although not as phenomenally complex as the trading networks of the succeeding Formative Period, trade during the Archaic served several important functions, providing:

 Objects for personal jewelry and ornamentation

 Exotic goods for use as grave offerings

 Some of the objects used in the shamanistic religion

Among the many items traded, either as raw materials or as finished artifacts, were obsidian, steatite, chert and other lithic materials, seashells (abalone and olivella), and crystals of quartz and tourmaline.

Clovis Culture

Clovis People

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The Clovis culture is a prehistoric Native American culture that first appears in the archaeological record of North America around 13,500 years ago, at the end of the last ice age.

The culture is named for artifacts found near Clovis, New Mexico, where the first evidence of this tool complex was excavated in 1932. Earlier evidence included a mammoth skeleton with a spear-point in its ribs, found by a cowboy in 1926 near Folsom, New Mexico. Clovis sites have since been identified throughout all of the contiguous United States, as well as Mexico and Central America.

The Clovis people, also known as Paleo-Indians, are generally regarded as the the first human inhabitants of the New World, and ancestors of all the indigenous cultures of North and South America. However, this view has been recently contested by various archaeological finds which are claimed to be much older.

There are a number of controversial sites vying for the position of the earliest site in the region. The best evidence, however, suggests that a society of hunters and gatherers known as Clovis People were the first to settle in the Southwest, probably sometime before 9,500 B.C. The Clovis People were so named after the New Mexico town, site of the first discovery in 1932, near Clovis, N.M.

Since the mid 20th century, the standard theory among archaeologists has been that the Clovis people were the first inhabitants of the Americas. The primary support of the theory was that no solid evidence of pre-Clovis human inhabitation has been found. According to the standard accepted theory, the Clovis people crossed the Beringia land bridge over the Bering Strait from Siberia to Alaska during the period of lowered sea levels during the ice age, then made their way southward through an ice-free corridor east of the Rocky Mountains in present-day western Canada as the glaciers retreated.

The culture lasted for about a half a millennium, from about 11,200 to 10,900 years ago. People of the Clovis culture were successful, efficient big-game hunters and foragers. Judging from sites on the North American Great Plains, the Clovis people were skilled hunters of huge animals, especially Ice Age mammoths and mastodons.

It is generally accepted that Clovis people hunted mammoth: sites abound where Clovis points are found mixed in with mammoth remains. Whether they drove the mammoth to extinction via overhunting them - the so-called Pleistocene overkill hypothesis - is still an open, and controversial, question, keeping in mind that Archaeology is purely a theoretical endeavor.

A single animal could provide meat for weeks on end, and if dried, for much of the winter, also. Not that the people used all the meat they butchered. Bison carcasses were more heavily utilized and less was left at the kill sites. Presumably, the hides, tusks, bones, and pelts were used to make household possessions, subsistence tools, for shelter, even clothing.

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Clovis Tools and Points

Projectile Points

Clovis tool kits were highly effective, lightweight, and portable, as befits people who were constantly on the move. Their stone technology was based on precious, fine-grained rock that came from widely separated outcrops, ones that were exploited for thousands of years by later people. Their most famous, celebrated, and distinctive part of their toolkit were their fluted projectile points.

A hallmark of Clovis culture is the use of a distinctively-shaped fluted rock spear point, known as the Clovis point. The Clovis point is distinctively bifacial and fluted on both sides, a feature that possibly allowed the point to be mounted onto a spear in a way so that the point would snap off on impact. Archaeologists do not agree on whether the widespread presence of these artifacts indicates the proliferation of a single people, or the adoption of a superior technology by non-Clovis people.

The typical Clovis point is leaf shaped, with parallel or slightly convex sides and a concave base. The edges of the basal portions are ground somewhat, probably to prevent the edge from severing the hafting cord. Clovis points range in length from 1 1/2 to 5 inches (4 to 13 centimetres) and are heavy and fluted, though the fluting rarely exceeds half the length. Some eastern variants of Clovis, called Ohio, Cumberland, or Suwannee, depending on their origin, are somewhat fish tailed and also narrower relative to length.

Exactly how these points were hafted is unknown, but the men probably carried a series of them mounted in wooden or bone foreshafts that worked loose from the spear shaft once the head was buried in its quarry. The Clovis people became successful hunters, often killing mammoth, mastodons, huge bison, horses and camels throughout the great plains of North America and into northern Mexico.

Also associated with Clovis are such implements as bone tools, hammerstones, scrapers, and unfluted projectile points. Besides projectile points, the Clovis people used bifacially trimmed points and other woodworking and butchering artifacts, as well as flakes used simply as sharp-edged, convenient tools in their struck-off form.

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Hunting

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Botany

The Clovis People were also botanists well-versed in the use of plants for food and equipment. They were geologists with a keen ability to seek out the best sources of New World flint for their finely crafted points and tools, and of ochre for use as a red pigment.

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Settlements

Clovis settled successfully into a broad range of environments. And after half a century of research, questions and disagreements still surround this short-lived, but extremely widespread North American culture.

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Origins - History

Known as "Clovis First," the predominant hypothesis among archaeologists in the latter half of the 20th century had been that the people associated with the Clovis culture were the first inhabitants of the Americas. The primary support for this was that no solid evidence of pre-Clovis human inhabitation had been found.

According to the standard accepted theory, the Clovis people crossed the Beringia land bridge over the Bering Strait from Siberia to Alaska during the period of lowered sea levels during the ice age, then made their way southward through an ice-free corridor east of the Rocky Mountains in present-day western Canada as the glaciers retreated. This hypothesis came to be challenged by studies suggesting a Pre-Clovis Human occupation of the Americas until in 2011, following the excavation of an occupation site at Buttermilk Creek, Texas, a prominent group of scientists claimed to have definitely established the existence "of an occupation older than Clovis."

Once thought to span thousands of years, the Clovis era is now dated to a few hundred, roughly from 11,400 to 10,900 radiocarbon years ago (13,325 - 12,975 cal BP)

In many ways, the Clovis people seem to appear by magic on the North American continent. The assumption has been that their ancestors moved south from Alaska, pursuing their favorite prey, the mammoth. However, there are no Clovis sites in either Alaska or Canada; likewise, there are no technological antecedants for Clovis anywhere in the Americas nor are their any technological antecedants in northeast Asia, extreme eastern Asia, or anywhere in Asia. So from where did the Clovis people come - or at least, from where did their technology of producing finely crafted, fluted spear points, come?

Some scientists have speculated that the ancestors of the Clovis people perfected their distinctive toolkits and fluting techniques while in route, via the (in)famous "ice-free corridor", from Alaska to the great plains of North America.

Other scientists have suggested that the ancestors of the Clovis people lived South of North America since there are isolated hints of human settlement earlier than 11,500 years ago (the earliest time Clovis appears in North America), at places like Monte Verde in southern Chile and Pedra Furada in Brazil. Alternately, there are a few sites in North America which pre-date Clovis, such as Meadowcroft Rockshelter, in western Pennsylvannia, and Pendejo Cave in New Mexico, and it may be that these sites represent not only a Pre-Clovis population, but one technologically ancestral to Clovis.

Currently several scientists have suggested that the technological ancestors of Clovis lie in Europe, specifically on the Iberian peninsula and France, with the so-called Solutrean culture.

According to archaeologist Dr. Bruce Bradley, both the Solutreans and the Clovis folks made beveled, crosshatched bone rods, idiosyncratic spear points of mammoth ivory, and triangular stone scrapers.

And while independent invention could account for these similarities (i.e., finding the same solutions to the same questions), the oldest Clovis tools are not on the Great Plains, or in the Great Basin or Southwest of the U.S. - where they should be if the Clovis people trickled in from Siberia and then fanned out across the continent - but rather they are found in the eastern and southeastern regions of the U.S. It's possible that Ice Age Europeans may have crossed into North America by boats, hugging the edges of the great ice sheets that stretched from Greenland westward to what is now upstate New York.

Around 10,500 years ago, Clovis abruptly vanish from the archaeological record, replaced by a myriad of different local hunter-gatherer cultures. Why this happened no one knows but their disappearance coincides with the mass extinction of Ice Age big-game animals, leading to speculation that Clovis people either hunted these mammals and drove them into extinction or over-hunting eliminated a "keystone species" (usually the mammoths or mastodon) and this led to environmental collapse and a more general extinction.

Another theory about the Clovis people is that these people caused the extinction in North America at the end of the Pleistocene. Researchers who support this view generally favor one of two explanations. The first is that human over-hunting directly caused the extinction. The second is that over-hunting eliminated a "keystone species" (usually the mammoths or mastodon) and this led to environmental collapse and a more general extinction.