Fluting is a technological and morphological hallmark of some of the most iconic North American Paleoindian stone points. Through decades of detailed artifact analyses and replication experiments, archaeologists have spent considerable effort reconstructing how flute removals were achieved, and they have explored possible explanations of why fluting was such an important aspect of early point technologies. However, the end of fluting has been less thoroughly researched. In southern North America, fluting is recognized as a diagnostic characteristic of Clovis points dating to approximately 13,000 cal yr BP, the earliest widespread use of fluting. One thousand years later, fluting occurs more variably in Dalton and is no longer useful as a diagnostic indicator. How did fluting change, and why did point makers eventually abandon fluting? In this article, we use traditional 2D measurements, geometric morphometric (GM) analysis of 3D models, and 2D GM of flute cross sections to compare Clovis and Dalton point flute and basal morphologies. The significant differences observed show that fluting in Clovis was highly standardized, suggesting that fluting may have functioned to improve projectile durability. Because Dalton points were used increasingly as knives and other types of tools, maximizing projectile functionality became less important. We propose that fluting in Dalton is a vestigial technological trait retained beyond its original functional usefulness.

The Tennessee Division of Archaeology documented an extensive Paleoindian lithic quarry and workshop at the Sinclair site in Tennessee in 2008. We present the first detailed description of the lithic assemblage here, which focuses on aspects of its prismatic blade technology. Quantitative and qualitative attributes of 117 blades are assessed to characterize the assemblage and investigate human behaviors related to its formation. We then compare the blades from Sinclair to other blade assemblages. Blades at Clovis workshop sites are large and generally unstandardized. Mobile Clovis bands selected long, highly standardized blades from workshop sites, cached them as resource insurance, and crafted and used them as tools at campsites. The prismatic blade assemblage at Sinclair and other sites throughout the Midsouth suggests that this region played an important role in the development of prismatic blade technology at the end of the Pleistocene.

El Fin del Mundo is an archaeological site in Sonora, northwest Mexico, that contains a buried Clovis megafauna kill in a lowland area and concentrations of Clovis and later lithic materials scattered on the deflated surface of the surrounding uplands. The Clovis lithic assemblage from the site, identified by its technological and typological features, has been classified into three modes: bifaces, unifaces, and blades. The kill locality only contains Clovis points, whereas the assemblage from the uplands includes multiple bifaces reflecting diverse stages of the manufacture process from blank production to finished, highly reduced, and discarded broken Clovis points, numerous end scrapers, and blades and blade manufacture byproducts. This assemblage is indicative of a campsite where stone tool production and possibly other domestic tasks took place. In addition, a rhyolite outcrop near both the campsite and the kill was intensively exploited, as reflected in the high proportion of this raw material in the Clovis assemblage. Unequivocal association of the kill locality and the campsite is not confirmed; however, the configuration of the site indicates that the campsite was established in uplands near locations with water, game, and lithic resources.

An enduring problem in North American archaeology concerns the nature of the transition between the Clovis and Folsom Paleoindian complexes in the West. Traditional models indicate a temporal hiatus between the two complexes implying that Folsom was a population replacement for Clovis. Alternatively, if Folsom was an innovation that occurred within Clovis populations and subsequently spread, we would expect to see a temporal overlap. Here, we test these hypotheses using high-quality radiocarbon dates and Bayesian statistics to infer the temporal boundaries of the complexes. We show that the Folsom complex initially appears between 12,900 and 12,740 cal BP, whereas Clovis disappears between 12,720 and12,490 cal BP. Therefore, Folsom may have appeared about 200 years before Clovis disappeared, and so the two complexes likely co-occurred in the West for nearly eight generations. This finding suggests that Folsom was a successful adaptive innovation that diffused through the western Clovis population, eventually going to fixation over multiple generations.

Our professional understanding of the archaeological record is informed through academic research interest, the nature (tensions of time/money/location) of cultural resource management, and the ability of archaeologists to fully access diverse forms of data potentially available to them. Knowledge of eastern Colorado is poorly known, given that 40% of the state is publicly owned (federal and state) and most professional work occurs on land administered by federal agencies in western Colorado. Given this research disparity, we argue that professional archaeologists in eastern Colorado would certainly benefit from expanding their research networks to include the efforts of avocational archaeologists. Our article describes how artifact collectors have searched eastern Colorado for the past 100 years; although their methods differ from professional approaches, their cumulative efforts provide a nuanced read of the archaeological record. Differences relate to increased time spent on sites, access to a variety of landforms, and repeated visits over the long term. We present a case study on playa lake archaeology to emphasize these concepts and provide suggestions as to how archaeologists can create better partnerships to unlock potentially novel perspectives of the archaeological record.

Paleoethnobotanical perspectives are essential for understanding past lifeways yet continue to be underrepresented in Paleoindian research. We present new archaeobotanical and radiocarbon data from combustion features within stratified cultural components at Connley Caves, Oregon, that reaffirm the inclusion of plants in the diet of Paleoindian groups. Botanical remains from three features in Connley Cave 5 show that people foraged for diverse dryland taxa and a narrow range of wetland plants during the summer and fall months. These data add new taxa to the known Pleistocene food economy and support the idea that groups equipped with Western Stemmed Tradition toolkits had broad, flexible diets. When viewed continentally, this work contributes to a growing body of research indicating that regionally adapted subsistence strategies were in place by at least the Younger Dryas and that some foragers in the Far West may have incorporated a wider range of plants including small seeds, leafy greens, fruits, cacti, and geophytes into their diet earlier than did Paleoindian groups elsewhere in North America. The increasing appearance of diverse and seemingly low-ranked resources in the emerging Paleoindian plant-food economy suggests the need to explore a variety of nutritional variables to explain certain aspects of early foraging behavior.

The discovery and development of metal as a tool medium is a topic of global interest. A fundamental research goal involves establishing the timing of human experimentation with naturally occurring copper ore, which is commonly associated with sedentary, agrarian-based societies. However, in North America, there is well-documented millennia-scale exploitation of copper as tool media by small, seasonally mobile hunter-gatherer groups in the western Great Lakes. Archaeologists have suggested that Late Paleoindian groups may have begun using copper as a tool medium almost immediately after they entered the Lake Superior basin. However, only a few radiocarbon dates support such early use of copper. Here, we use optimal linear estimation modeling to infer the origin date for copper tool production in North America. Our results show that the invention of copper as a tool media likely occurred shortly after the first pioneering populations encountered copper ore during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. The origin dates modeled here (ca. 8100 RCYBP) reveal several important features about the behavior of pioneering hunter-gatherer populations. Moreover, our results suggest that this phenomenon represents the earliest known use of metal for utilitarian copper tool production.

Recent excavations by the Ancient Southwest Texas Project of Texas State University sampled a previously undocumented Younger Dryas component from Eagle Cave in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of Texas. This stratified assemblage consists of bison (Bison antiquus) bones in association with lithic artifacts and a hearth. Bayesian modeling yields an age of 12,660–12,480 cal BP, and analyses indicate behaviors associated with the processing of a juvenile bison and the manufacture and maintenance of lithic tools. This article presents spatial, faunal, macrobotanical, chronometric, geoarchaeological, and lithic analyses relating to the Younger Dryas component within Eagle Cave. The identification of the Younger Dryas occupation in Eagle Cave should encourage archaeologists to revisit previously excavated rockshelter sites in the Lower Pecos and beyond to evaluate deposits for unrecognized, older occupations.

Since the emergence of the niche in Folsom, New Mexico, in the late 1920s, peopling archaeology has sought to understand the earliest human occupants of the Western Hemisphere. Three generations of practitioners have made great strides in the techno-environmental arena. However, we have largely failed to tap into PaleoIndigenous intellectual, emotional, and social lives—the very domains that made Ice Age people as fully human as we are. As a result, our interpretations of those pioneering populations could often apply as readily to a colony of ants or a herd of wildebeest as they do to living, breathing, thinking, dreaming, loving, striving human ancestors. This article first explores the reasons for our failure to fully actualize First Peoples, identifying and implicating a feedback loop that includes practitioner homogeneity (we have always been and continue to be disproportionately white men of European descent); our predominantly positivist worldview; our language, training, and practice; and even the limited nature of the material record we study. This article also, however, highlights the ways that an important minority of peopling scholars have sought to access the humanity of PaleoIndigenous people. By more consistently mobilizing our own human capacity to creatively interrogate the deep past, we will produce scholarship that more consistently recognizes the capacity of the people who lived it and, just as importantly, respects those living today.

Mollusk and ostracode assemblages from the distal Old River Bed delta (ORBD) contribute to our understanding of the Lake Bonneville basin Pleistocene-Holocene transition (PHT) wetland and human presence on the ORBD (ca. 13,000–7500 cal yr BP). Located on U.S. Air Force-managed lands of the Great Salt Lake Desert (GSLD) in western Utah, USA, the area provided 30 samples from 12 localities. The biological assemblages and the potential water sources using 87Sr/86Sr analyses showed wetland expansion and contraction across the PHT, including the Younger-Dryas Chronozone (YDC). The record reflects cold, freshwater conditions, which is uncharacteristic of the Great Salt Lake Desert, after recession of Lake Bonneville. Lymnaea stagnalis jugularis, Cytherissa lacustris, and possibly Candona sp. cf. C. adunca, an endemic and extinct species only reported from Lake Bonneville, suggest cold-water environments. Between 13,000–12,400 cal yr BP, a shallow lake formed, referred to as the Old River Bed delta lake, fed by Lake Gunnison, as shown by 87Sr/86Sr ratios of 0.71024–0.71063 in mollusk fossils collected at the ORBD, characteristic of the Sevier basin. These findings add paleoenvironmental context to the long-term use of the ORBD by humans in constantly changing wetland habitats between 13,000–9500 cal yr BP.

Archaeological studies at Coxcatlan Cave in the Tehuacan Valley of southern Puebla, Mexico, have been instrumental to the development of the chronology for the region and for our understanding of the origins of food production in the Americas. This article refines the Preceramic chronology of the Tehuacan Valley by presenting 14 new accelerated mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon ages from faunal bone samples uncovered from early depositional levels of the rock shelter. Although bones associated with the El Riego (9893–7838 cal BP), Coxcatlan (7838–6375 cal BP), and Abejas (6375–4545 cal BP) phase zones of the cave yielded ages similar to those of the previously proposed chronology for the region, bones from the Ajuereado phase zones at the base of the cave yielded surprisingly old ages that range from 33,448 to 28,279 cal BP, a time prior to the Last Glacial Maximum. Because these early ages are many thousands of years older than current models estimate for the peopling of the Americas, they require reassessments of the artifacts and ecofacts excavated from these early zones.

To evaluate a model of the travel-route selection process for upper Ohio Valley Paleoindian foragers (13,500–11,400 cal BP), this study investigates archaeological data through the theoretical framework of landscape learning and risk-sensitive analysis. Following initial trail placement adjacent to a highly visible escarpment landform, Paleoindians adopted a risk-averse strategy to minimize travel outcome variability when wayfaring between Sandy Springs, a significant Ohio River Paleoindian site, and Upper Mercer–Vanport chert quarries of east-central Ohio. Although a least-cost analysis indicates an optimal route through the lower Scioto Valley, archaeological evidence for this path is lacking. Geomorphic and archaeological data further suggest that site absence in the lower Scioto Valley is not entirely due to sampling bias. Instead, evidence indicates that Paleoindians preferred travel within the Ohio Brush Creek–Baker's Fork valley despite its longer path distance through more rugged, constricted terrain. Potential travel through the lower Scioto Valley hypothesizes high outcome variability due to the stochastic nature of the late Pleistocene hydroregime. In this case, perceived outcome variability appears more influential in determining travel-route decisions among Paleoindians than direct efforts to reduce energy and time allocation.

A distinct feature of many of the earliest archaeological sites (13,000-11,200 cal yr BP) at the core of the Atacama Desert is that they lie at or just below the surface, often encased in desert pavements. In this study, we compare these sites and undisturbed desert pavements to understand archaeological site formation and pavement development and recovery. Our results indicate these pavements and their soils are poorly developed regardless of their age. We propose that this is because of sustained lack of rain and extreme physical breakdown of clasts by salt expansion. Thus, the core of the Atacama provides an example of the lower limits of rainfall (<50 mm/yr) needed to form desert pavements. At site Quebrada Maní 12 (QM12), humans destroyed the pavement. After abandonment, human-made depressions were filled with eolian sands, incorporating artifacts in shallow deposits. Small and medium-sized artifacts preferentially migrated upwards, perhaps due to earthquakes and the action of salts. These artifacts, which now form palimpsests at the surface, helped – along with older clasts - to restore surface clast cover. Larger archaeological features remained undisturbed on top of a deeper Byzm horizon. The vesicular A horizons (Av horizons) have not regenerated on the archaeological sites due to extreme scarcity of rainfall during the Holocene.

The central Colorado Plateau contains an exceptional density of cultural resources. Historically, however, archaeological investigations have overlooked the late Pleistocene and early Holocene record of this region. As such, there is currently a biased understanding of the earliest human occupations and adaptations. The regional Paleoindian record is reviewed here to assess the nature of initial human occupation of the area. Projectile point typologies, toolstone selection, and site distributions are used to characterize the land use patterns used by the region's earliest inhabitants. Results suggest that as early as circa 13,000 cal BP Clovis groups were familiar with the lithic landscape and habitually made use of local materials. Subsequent Paleoindian populations maintained relatively consistent levels of occupation throughout the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. Finally, the presence of classic Southwest, High Plains, and Great Basin–related lithic technologies suggests that the central Colorado Plateau was part of early interregional land use strategies.

Archaeologists have long subjected Clovis megafauna kill/scavenge sites to the highest level of scrutiny. In 1987, a Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi) was found in spatial association with a small artifact assemblage in Converse County, Wyoming. However, due to the small tool assemblage, limited nature of the excavations, and questions about the security of the association between the artifacts and mammoth remains, the site was never included in summaries of human-killed/scavenged megafauna in North America. Here we present the results of four field seasons of new excavations at the La Prele Mammoth site that confirm the presence of an associated cultural occupation based on geologic context, artifact attributes, spatial distributions, protein residue analysis, and lithic microwear analysis. This new work identified a more extensive cultural occupation including the presence of multiple discrete artifact clusters in close proximity to the mammoth bone bed. This study confirms the presence of a second Clovis mammoth kill/scavenge site in Wyoming and shows the value in revisiting proposed terminal Pleistocene kill/scavenge sites.

Cougar Mountain Cave is located in Oregon's Fort Rock Basin. In 1958, avocationalist John Cowles excavated most of the cave's deposits and recovered abundant fiber, lithic, wood, and osseous artifacts. A crew from the University of California, Davis returned to the site in 1966 to evaluate the potential for further research, collecting additional lithic and fiber artifacts from disturbed deposits and in situ charcoal from apparently undisturbed deposits. Because Cowles took few notes or photographs, the Cougar Mountain Cave collection—most of which is housed at the Favell Museum in Klamath Falls, Oregon—has largely gone unstudied even though it contains diagnostic artifacts spanning the Holocene and, potentially, the terminal Pleistocene. We recently submitted charcoal and basketry from the site for radiocarbon dating, providing the first reliable sense of when Cougar Mountain Cave was first occupied. Our results indicate at least a Younger Dryas age for initial occupation. The directly dated basketry has provided new information about the age ranges and spatial distributions of diagnostic textile types in the northwestern Great Basin.

The Hell Gap National Historic Landmark, located on the northwestern plains of Wyoming, is one of the most important Paleoindian archaeological sites in North America because it contains a stratified sequence of occupations spanning nearly the entirety of the Paleoindian period. Although Hell Gap is central to archaeological knowledge concerning North American Paleoindian chronology, consistently assigning component ages has been problematic due to conflicting radiocarbon determinations from individual strata, stratigraphic age reversals in age-depth relationships, and other issues related to the stratified open campsite. Toward resolving the Hell Gap chronology, we devised a procedure for correcting age-depth relationships for incorporation in chronostratigraphic models and then used the Bayesian age-depth modeling qprocedures in Bchron to estimate the ages of 11 stratified components present at Hell Gap Locality 1. We present these age estimates and discuss their significance to Paleoindian chronology. Notable aspects of our chronology include a revised age estimate for the Goshen complex, the identification of three Folsom components spanning the entirety of the Folsom temporal range, and relatively young age estimates for the Late Paleoindian Frederick/Lusk component(s) at Locality 1. More broadly, our study demonstrates a procedure for creating chronometric models of stratigraphically complicated open stratified sites of any type.

Sedimentological, faunal, and archaeological investigations at the Sunshine Locality, Long Valley, Nevada reveal a history of human adaptation and environmental change at the last glacial–interglacial transition in North America's north-central Great Basin. The locality contains a suite of lacustrine, alluvial, and eolian deposits associated with fluvially reworked faunal remains and Paleoindian artifacts. Radiocarbon-dated stratigraphy indicates a history of receding pluvial lake levels followed by alluvial downcutting and subsequent valley filling with marsh-like conditions at the end of the Pleistocene. A period of alluvial deposition and shallow water tables (9,800 to 11,000 14C yr B.P.) correlates to the Younger Dryas. Subsequent drier conditions and reduced surface runoff mark the early Holocene; sand dunes replace wetlands by 8,000 14C yr B.P. The stratigraphy at Sunshine is similar to sites located 400 km south and supports regional climatic synchroneity in the central and southern Great Basin during the terminal Pleistocene/early Holocene. Given regional climate change and recurrent geomorphic settings comparable to Sunshine, we believe that there is a high potential for buried Paleoindian features in primary association with extinct fauna elsewhere in the region yet to be discovered due to limited stratigraphic exposure and consequent low visibility.

The paleoenvironments of late Pleistocene and early Holocene time on the Southern High Plains have been studied for decades, but regionally extensive or long-term, easily recoverable proxy climate indicators are difficult to find. The stratigraphy of valley fill and upland eolian deposits and stable-carbon isotope data, in addition to geographically limited paleontological data, now provide clues to the environment during this time, which includes the earliest, or Paleoindian period (∼11,200–8000 14C yr B.P.) of human occupation. During the Clovis occupation (∼11,200–10,900 14C yr B.P.), valleys contained perennial streams. This was followed in Folsom time (10,900–10,200 14C yr B.P.) by an abrupt change to lakes and ponds (with water levels fluctuating between several meters depth and no surface water) and marshes and accumulation of sheet sands on uplands, starting the earliest phase of construction of the regional dune fields. These changing conditions indicate a shift from relatively wetter to relatively drier conditions with episodic drought. Stable-C isotopes further indicate that warming characterized the Clovis–Folsom transition. During the rest of the Paleoindian period the environment was relatively cool but fluctuated between wetter and drier conditions with an overall trend toward drying that resulted in further enlargement of the dune fields and culminated in the warm, dry Altithermal beginning ∼8000 14C yr B.P. Clovis time probably was the wettest of any Paleoindian period in terms of runoff and spring discharge. The Folsom period was drier and was the earliest episode of regional wind erosion and eolian deposition and may have been the warmest of Paleoindian times. Evidence of a previously hypothesized “Clovis drought” in this region is sparse.