INTRODUCTION TO ARCHAEOLOGY Nancy White - Touro Institute

them the site to get professional approval! Two big reports have been questioned, despite their
detail, because of the confusion of stratigraphic layers and other missing data. When you
challenge the accepted wisdom you have a huge burden of proof to come up with. But there has
been a gradual change toward expanding the view of what the earliest Americans were doing.
There were many different kinds of adaptations in different regions. Anna Roosevelt is an
archaeologist who has found that the earliest people in the Amazon, contemporaneous with
Paleoindian folks elsewhere, were making small stemmed projectile points, fishing and eating
nuts from the jungle, even manipulating the forest for
human needs.
There have been more Clovis points found in the
eastern U.S. than in the west, where the bison and
mammoth kill sites are. Some exciting newer finds in
Florida have come from underwater. Years of diving
and working with amateur archaeologists in north
Florida’s clear, spring-fed rivers have produced Paleo
points with bison and elephant remains, such as tusks
with cut marks on them, and dates a little older than
12,000 years ago. An exciting new find is a fluted
point underwater out in the Gulf of Mexico, several
miles offshore. Under some conditions, those drowned
sites can be found! This work is being done by Florida
State University (check out their anthropology
department's underwater archaeology website).
How do Archaic period sites show changing
adaptations after the Pleistocene? At Carrier Mills in
southern Illinois, found during cultural resources
survey before the area was strip-mined, the black earth
stains in aerial photos showed where Archaic middens
contained remains of modern animal species,
especially fish, turtles. and deer. Plant remains were
dominated by hickory nuts, but that may be just
because nutshells preserve well. Grave goods with
only 25 percent of the burials showed no real social
differences except in male and female tools and the
lack of decorative items with females. The Desert
Archaic is represented at Gatecliff rockshelter in Nevada. Here mountain sheep bones dominate
the midden, suggesting it was hunted the most. Dry conditions preserved cordage and basketry,
but only a few food remains such as seeds and nuts. A different kind of Archaic adaptation, to
the wet northwest coast, is seen at the Ozette site in Washington State, where mudslides covered
and preserved a late prehistoric settlement complete with fancy fishing gear and beautiful wood
and fiber craftwork.