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Pre-Clovis projectile points at the Debra L. Friedkin site, Texas-Implications for the Late Pleistocene peopling of the Americas.

ABSTRACT: Lanceolate projectile points of the Clovis complex and stemmed projectile points of the Western Stemmed Tradition first appeared in North America by ~13 thousand years (ka) ago. The origin, age, and chronological superposition of these stemmed and lanceolate traditions are unclear. At the Debra L. Friedkin site, Texas, below Folsom and Clovis horizons, we find stemmed projectile points dating from ~13.5 to ~15.5 ka ago, with a triangular lanceolate point form appearing ~14 ka ago. The sequential relationship of stemmed projectile points followed by lanceolate forms suggests that lanceolate points are derived from stemmed forms or that they originated from two separate migrations into the Americas.

SUBMITTER: Waters MR

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6200361 | biostudies-other | 2018 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Pre-Clovis projectile points at the Debra L. Friedkin site, Texas-Implications for the Late Pleistocene peopling of the Americas.

Waters Michael R MR Keene Joshua L JL Forman Steven L SL Prewitt Elton R ER Carlson David L DL Wiederhold James E JE

Science advances 20181024 10

Lanceolate projectile points of the Clovis complex and stemmed projectile points of the Western Stemmed Tradition first appeared in North America by ~13 thousand years (ka) ago. The origin, age, and chronological superposition of these stemmed and lanceolate traditions are unclear. At the Debra L. Friedkin site, Texas, below Folsom and Clovis horizons, we find stemmed projectile points dating from ~13.5 to ~15.5 ka ago, with a triangular lanceolate point form appearing ~14 ka ago. The sequential ...[more]

PMID: 30397643

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Project description:There are multiple hypotheses for human responses to glacial cycling in the Late Pleistocene, including changes in population size, interconnectedness, and mobility. Lithic technological analysis informs us of human responses to environmental change because lithic assemblage characteristics are a reflection of raw material transport, reduction, and discard behaviors that depend on hunter-gatherer social and economic decisions. Pinnacle Point Site 5-6 (PP5-6), Western Cape, South Africa is an ideal locality for examining the influence of glacial cycling on early modern human behaviors because it preserves a long sequence spanning marine isotope stages (MIS) 5, 4, and 3 and is associated with robust records of paleoenvironmental change. The analysis presented here addresses the question, what, if any, lithic assemblage traits at PP5-6 represent changing behavioral responses to the MIS 5-4-3 interglacial-glacial cycle? It statistically evaluates changes in 93 traits with no a priori assumptions about which traits may significantly associate with MIS. In contrast to other studies that claim that there is little relationship between broad-scale patterns of climate change and lithic technology, we identified the following characteristics that are associated with MIS 4: increased use of quartz, increased evidence for outcrop sources of quartzite and silcrete, increased evidence for earlier stages of reduction in silcrete, evidence for increased flaking efficiency in all raw material types, and changes in tool types and function for silcrete. Based on these results, we suggest that foragers responded to MIS 4 glacial environmental conditions at PP5-6 with increased population or group sizes, 'place provisioning', longer and/or more intense site occupations, and decreased residential mobility. Several other traits, including silcrete frequency, do not exhibit an association with MIS. Backed pieces, once they appear in the PP5-6 record during MIS 4, persist through MIS 3. Changing paleoenvironments explain some, but not all temporal technological variability at PP5-6.

Dataset Information

Pre-Clovis projectile points at the Debra L. Friedkin site, Texas-Implications for the Late Pleistocene peopling of the Americas.

Publications

Pre-Clovis projectile points at the Debra L. Friedkin site, Texas-Implications for the Late Pleistocene peopling of the Americas.

Similar Datasets

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