Archaeology and Prehistory of North America

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ARCHAEOLOGY AND PREHISTORY OF NORTH AMERICA

ARCHAEOLOGY AND PREHISTORY OF NORTH AMERICA. Settlement of the North American continent began at least 15,000 years ago, after the ocean level had dropped to expose a landmass beneath the modern-day Bering Strait. The people who first crossed from Asia into North America were probably small family groups or hunting parties, who came both by foot and in watercraft along the North American coastline. Over the next several thousand years, the descendents of these people developed unique societies across North America with complex political, economic, and religious systems and lifeways adapted to particular local environments.

Archaeologists refer to the earliest North Americans as Paleoindians. What is known about them comes largely from evidence found in caves, as caves offered both temporary shelter for these highly mobile groups and excellent conditions for archaeological preservation. The bones of butchered animals, flaked stone tools, and the remnants

of fire-hearths point to human habitation of the Bluefish Caves in the Yukon by 13,000 b.c., and of Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Pennsylvania by 12,500 b.c. Ten-thousand-year-old sagebrush bark sandals have been found at Fort Rock Cave in Oregon. The earliest known human remains in North America come from Santa Rosa Island in California and date to at least 11,000 b.c.

Paleoindian people across the North American continent focused on hunting megafauna (bison, mammoths, giant ground sloths), using a toolkit that included knives, scrapers, some bone tools, and fine projectile points—including the distinctive Clovis point. The Clovis points were "fluted" to allow attachment to a short shaft that could be mounted on a spear. Smaller mammals and collected vegetable foods were supplemental to the diet.

With the extinction of megafauna at the end of the Pleistocene (c. 10,000 years ago), Paleo-Indian peoples diversified, shifting away from big-game hunting to become more generalized hunter-gatherers. This change also marked the end of the use of the Clovis point and the adoption of a more generalized toolkit. People now followed an annual pattern of movement throughout a large geographic area, hunting and gathering seasonal foods. Favored sites were probably returned to year after year and bands formed in areas where food was abundant. What ensued was the flourishing across the continent of cultural groups that were increasingly reliant on both local environmental conditions and interaction with neighboring groups.

The Far West

The West Coast offers one of the richest natural environments on the planet. The environmental diversity found along the coast allowed for the development of some of the most complex hunter-gatherer societies in the world. Resource availability greatly affected the people of this region, and at the time of European contact there was a great diversity of societies, from small mobile bands out toward the Great Basin, to large semi-permanent communities along the coast.

In the Pacific Northwest, fishing industries date to at least 5000 b.c. A Northwest Coast cultural tradition clearly emerges about 3500 b.c., with the rapid increase in the number of village sites, the intensification of shell-fish collection, the development of specialized technologies for marine fisheries and specialized woodworking tools, and a general trend towards cultural homogeneity throughout the region. After 1000 b.c. people lived in wood-plank houses in increasingly larger and defensible villages and relied upon fish weirs, vegetable foods, and food storage for sustenance. The societies in the Pacific Northwest had different social classes, with elite and commoners distinguished by status markers and assigned religious tasks.

The basic California coastal lifestyle, which included shellfish collection, fishing, and sea mammal hunting, was in place at least 10,500 years ago. Around 5000 b.c., the marine lifestyle began to be augmented by a seasonal cycle in which fall nut and seed harvests alternated with shell-fish collection. This way of life placed a greater reliance on vegetable foods, particularly the acorn of the oak tree. The focus on gathering many types of resources from many different natural environments helped spur the growth of complex hunter-gatherer societies. By a.d. 1000 the flow of trade goods like obsidian and shell beads was widespread throughout California and the Great Basin. Although material culture was broadly similar throughout California, local groups each developed unique stylistic traditions. Native people in California spoke over one hundred different languages, and by the time of European contact, there were more than 300,000 native people living in California.

The Great Basin does not have the abundant natural resources of the Pacific Northwest and California. Around 10,000 years ago, native peoples practiced big-game hunting around the remnants of Ice Age lakes in what archaeologists call the Western Pluvial Lakes Tradition. As the pluvial lakes dried up around five to seven thousand years ago, native peoples diversified their collection of foods, foraging year-round for many types of vegetable and animal foods, and storing goods at semi-permanent winter base camps. Piñon nuts become a critical part of the desert diet by about a.d. 500, around the same time that pottery and the bow-and-arrow were introduced. About a.d. 400, some groups in the south of the Great Basin developed ties with the Southwest, and cultivated maize, beans, and squash. However, these groups remain differentiated from Southwest cultures because of a continued reliance on hunter-gatherer lifeways to augment agriculture.

The Southwest

The Southwest is classically defined as extending from Durango, Colorado, in the north to Durango, Mexico, in

the south and from Las Vegas, Nevada, in the east to Las Vegas, New Mexico, in the west. Although this area encompasses extremely diverse environments, it has a predominantly arid to semi-arid climate, and this aridity has conditioned the nature of human existence in the region for the past 11,000 years.

During what archaeologists refer to as the Archaic period (5500 b.c.–a.d. 200), the climate and vegetation of the Southwest came to assume their modern patterns. Economies were based on hunting modern game animals and gathering plants. Archaic stone tools were less specialized and less distinctive than those of the Paleoindian period, due to a more generalized subsistence base. While it is clear that Archaic peoples did obtain domesticated crops—such as maize, beans, and squash—from groups farther south in Mesoamerica, these were not heavily re-lied upon. Instead, agriculture during this time period can mainly be viewed as an activity that native groups casually experimented with as a means to supplement their normal set of resources.

By a.d. 500 agriculture had begun to take root in the Southwest, bringing with it sedentism (the practice of establishing permanent, year-round settlements), ceramic traditions, and cultural complexity. From roughly a.d. 500 to a.d. 750, the foundations of the three main cultural groups found in the prehistoric Southwest were laid down, as people began to aggregate into larger and larger settlements and started to interact with each other across long distances through political, economic, and ideological means. By a.d. 1000 the Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi),

Hohokam, and Mogollon traditions were fairly well defined on the Colorado Plateau, in the Sonoran Desert, and in southern New Mexico, respectively.

Of the three traditions, the most complex are the Ancestral Puebloan and the Hohokam, which both "peaked" at roughly the same time (a.d. 1150), yet rarely interacted with one another despite their proximity. The height of Ancestral Puebloan culture can be seen at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, which was the center of a regional system of sites spanning an area of approximately 100,000 square kilometers. A series of ceremonial roads connected most of these sites to one another. The height of Hohokam culture can be observed in the Phoenix Basin (at sites like Snaketown), which for all intents and purposes during this time period is one contiguous archaeological site composed of hundreds of communities interlinked by a massive irrigation canal network. Both regional systems carried on long-distance trade with Mesoamerica, although the Hohokam did so more frequently and directly.

While the accomplishments of both of these traditions are impressive, the environment of the Southwest is marginal and very fragile. Severe droughts, resource instability, and overexploitation of the environment, combined with competition, warfare, and a host of other factors, eventually caused the collapse of both regional systems. While it is not entirely clear what the fate of the Hohokam people was, the history of the Ancestral Puebloan people is fairly well understood. By a.d. 1300 groups on the Colorado Plateau and elsewhere began to move south, and eventually reorganized themselves into the large Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona that the Spanish encountered and that we are familiar with today, including the Zuni, Hopi, and Acoma.

Plains

The Plains area extends from the Canadian boreal forest in the north to central Texas in the south, and from the Rocky Mountains in the west to the Missouri River and the eastern boundaries of the states of Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma in the east. Prior to settlement by European Americans, this region was almost continuous open grassland, interrupted by isolated mountainous areas, as well as forested regions located along major river valleys. The Plains climate is extremely unpredictable, but is generally characterized by heavy summer rains, a steep east-to-west decrease in precipitation, and cold winters. Bison dominated the landscape, although deer and elk could be found in the forests.

While the Paleoindian emphasis on big-game hunting may have persisted on the northwestern Plains, by the Archaic period native groups generally had broken up into smaller, more mobile social groups that diversified

their subsistence base. By a.d. 900 the Plains were populated by nomadic bison hunters in the north and west and semi-sedentary, incipient horticulturalists in most other areas. At this time, villages begin to appear throughout most of the Plains. While the exploitation of wild resources such as bison was still important, the inhabitants of these villages relied heavily upon cultivated corn, beans, squash, and sunflower. The development of these village complexes is most likely related to the rise of more complex societies in the Mississippian and Eastern Woodlands areas at the same time. Nomadic bison hunters continued their ways of life with little discernible change

throughout the Plains Village Period. Both groups were heavily and negatively impacted by European contact in the 1500s and the subsequent European American settlement of the Plains.

Mississippian

By Mississippian, archaeologists mean the hundreds of late precontact societies that thrived from roughly a.d. 750 to a.d. 1500 throughout the Tennessee, Cumberland, and Mississippian river valleys. These societies were once known collectively to Americans as the Moundbuilders, a "mysterious" group of people who apparently built all of the large earthen mounds found throughout the eastern United States and then vanished without a trace before Europeans arrived. As the eastern half of America was more thoroughly explored during the nineteenth century and as archaeologists began working at Moundbuilder sites, a more complex picture of these peoples developed, leading to a more appropriate name for their culture and the understanding that they never really disappeared at all.

The Mississippian emergence is characterized by a number of distinctive features: characteristic pottery (usually containing crushed mussel shell); village-based maize agriculture; construction of large flat-topped mounds, commonly situated near the town plaza; and a stratified social organization embodying permanent (and most likely hereditary) offices. Mississippian people also adopted the bow and arrow, explicitly connected their religion to agricultural productivity, often worshiped a fire-sun deity, and engaged in intensive long-distance trade.

During their heyday, the Mississippian elite presided over vast and complex ceremonial centers, sites that today are called Cahokia, Moundville, Spiro, and Etowah. The Mississippian aristocracy was invested with power by the thousands upon thousands of farming people who lived in smaller palisaded hamlets and farmsteads and relied on the elites for protection and guidance. The locus of political power continually shifted, "cycling" between several large communities that lost and regained prominence depending on their population sizes, their ability to access important resources, and the charisma of their leaders.

One of the most fascinating windows into the ancient Mississippian world is the site of Cahokia, the largest city in precontact native North America. At its peak, Cahokia was home to at least 20,000 people, although some estimates are twice this number. The city contained a complex of 120 earthen mounds surrounded by a massive wooden palisade that reached fifteen feet in places. A few mounds were used to bury the dead, but most were devoted to ceremonies involving the living. The majority of the population lived outside of the complex.

Much of eastern North America did not participate in the complete elaboration of Mississippian culture. However, all were to some extent dependent upon Mississippian-style economics. Descendents of the great American Indian confederacies of the American South—including the "Five Civilized Tribes"—are deeply rooted in their Mississippian ancestry.

Eastern Woodlands

The prehistory of the Eastern Woodlands features the range of lifeways found throughout North America. The development of agriculture, the construction of large complexes of geometric and effigy earthworks, extensive long-distance trade, and rich aesthetic traditions reveal the complexity of native civilizations of the Eastern Woodlands.

Native people in the Northeast shifted from big-game hunting to generalized hunting and gathering about 8000–6000 b.c. Population density in resource-rich areas led to the elaboration of different material-culture styles, manifested in the development of various side-notched, corner-notched, and stemmed projectile points. The first burial mound was erected at L'Anse Amour in Labrador around 5600 b.c. The trend toward greater complexity, diversity, and population size began about 4000 b.c., and led to regional variation throughout the Northeast.

The development of visible burial centers and the intensification of local and regional exchange mark the shift into what archaeologists call the Woodland Period (1000 b.c.–a.d. 1). Trade brought crops like maize, gourds, and squashes to the Northeast from Mexico, and grit-tempered pottery containers became increasingly important as people started to rely upon the cultivation of both indigenous and introduced crops. A mortuary-centered system known as the Adena complex (c. 1000 b.c.–a.d. 100) was located in the central Ohio Valley and shared by many nearby cultural groups. Earlier Adena burial centers are marked by an essentially egalitarian burial program, utilitarian grave goods, and small, earthen burial mounds. Later Adena ceremonial centers featured elaborate burials,

with exotic grave goods and large earthen mounds with circular enclosures thought to be gathering places.

After a.d. 100 the cultural groups in the Northeast intensified gathering and agricultural techniques, fixed boundaries to legitimize a right to local resources, and developed a set of complex local and regional ties. The most spectacular archaeological evidence of the elaboration of Northeastern Woodland cultures is found in the Hopewell ceremonial sites in Ohio. These religious and political centers range from a few acres to a few hundred acres in size and typically contain a burial mound and a geometric earthwork complex. Mortuary structures underneath the mounds were often log tombs containing cremation or bundled burials and exotic grave goods like copper and meteoric iron from the Plains or alligator and shark teeth from the Southeast. The extent of the Hope-well interaction sphere underscores the growing sophistication and class stratification of Northeastern cultures over time and the importance of "powerful" exotic items in local, public display.

End of Prehistory

The end of prehistory was brought on by European settlement of the North American continent, which forever changed the way of life for native communities. Beginning from the 1500s onward, Native Americans were encroached upon by European powers seeking a toehold in the New World. In some regions, entire native communities were simply destroyed or subjugated, as in the Southwest and California. However, in all instances Native Americans interacted and traded with Europeans. Native trade was an important factor in colonial American politics and economics in the Northeast and Southeast and for Russian expansion along the Pacific Coast.

The long-term impact of European contact was devastating to the Native American way of life. The introduction of disease, the relentlessness of European and eventually American expansionist aggression, and the breakdown of traditional cycles of agriculture and gathering all taken together brought widespread disruption. Nonetheless, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the descendents of the "First Americans" continue to practice aspects of their traditional lifeways in communities across the continent.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fagan, Brian M. Ancient North America: The Archaeology of a Continent. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1995.

Fagan, Brian M., ed. The Oxford Companion to Archaeology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Sturtevant, William C., et al., eds. Handbook of North American Indians. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1978–1996. Currently at twenty volumes.

Thomas, David Hurst. Exploring Ancient Native America: An Archaeological Guide. New York: Routledge, 1999.

Brian IsaacDaniels

Devin AlanWhite