1 PREHISTORY OF CANAAN VALLEY: AN ECOLOGICAL VIEW ...

penetrated by humans by 12,000 YBP (Carr et al. 2001). Possible pre-Paleo-Indian
artifacts at Meadowcroft Rockshelter in the Appalachin Plateau province of
southwestern Pennsylvania, about 150 km northwest of Canaan Valley, have been dated
at 17,000 YBP (Adovasio et al. 1990, Adovasio and Page 2002, Sullivan and Prezzano
2001b), but several critics assert the samples were contaminated. A pre-Clovis presence
is supported by two other sites, (1) Monte Verde, Chile at 12,500-13,000 YBP; and (2)
Hell Gap, Wyoming at 11,400 YBP (Carr et al. 2001).
Terminal dates of the Clovis horizon are close to those for the extinction of 35-40
species of large-bodied mammals. This synchrony has led some paleoecologists to
champion the "overkill hypothesis," in which Clovis hunters exterminated much of the
Pleistocene megafauna (Martin 1984). Alternately, perhaps additively, they died out
because of climatic warming (Flannery 2001).
Eastern Paleo-Indians seem to have followed a more diverse hunting-gathering
subsistence strategy than their western big-game hunting contemporaries (Thomas 1994,
Walker et al. 2001). More regionally, from small sites in major stream valleys, especially
along the eastern and western flanks of the Appalachians (Lane and Anderson 2001), they
exploited nuts, hackberries, fish, waterfowl, and small mammals in a lifeway called
broad-spectrum foraging (Carr et al. 2001). It is consistent that in the East fluted points
have not been recovered in association with the remains of large Pleistocene mammals.
Eastern Paleo-Indians, subsisting as thinly scattered mobile multi-family bands, produced
a great variety of fluted points. This comparatively higher diversity of projectile points
has been labeled the Eastern Fluted Point Tradition (Fagan 2000).
In the East, Clovis points have been found in Nova Scotia, Massachusetts,
Pennsylvania, Illinois, along the Ohio River, and in Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee,
Georgia, and Alabama. Although Paleo-Indians were rare in the Appalachian Mountains
(Turner 1984), possibly because they generally avoided heavily dissected uplands
(Brashler 1984, Bush 1996), fluted points have been found in West Virginia along the
Lower Monongahela River and at the Ohio River at Parkersburg, and more locally at
Judy Gap and Marlinton, and in Preston County (Lesser 1993). The Paleo-Indian
extended-use site closest to Canaan Valley may have been about 100 km east along the
Shenandoah River.
Archaic Period (11,000-3,000 YBP)
The climate continued warming until only the highest summits remained suitable for
spruce and fir. Throughout much of the Mid-Atlantic highlands, the ecological transition
from spruce-pine boreal forest to the mesic oak-hickory community was completed
during 10,000-9,000 YBP (Braun 1950, Lane and Anderson 2001). With temperatures
similar to those of higher latitudes, Canaan Valley's cold humid climate has maintained a
refugium for boreal plants.
Growing human populations began to concentrate in the region's floodplains. In the
Appalachian Plateau physiographic province, which includes Canaan Valley, streams run
through narrow V-shaped valleys, so large floodplains were an uncommon habitat (Wall
1981) (Fig. 1). Archaic sites have been uncovered in large floodplain areas along the
Cheat, Tygart Valley, and South Branch Potomac rivers (Brashler 1984).
A hallmark of the Archaic Period was subsistence generalization. Hunting was
deemphasized. In contrast to the specialized fluted point designed for hunting big
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