Chancellor Martin

11/9/19

Anthropology 1030 402

Griffiths, Alan

The Early and Middle Holocene in the Americas

The Holocene, starting around 12000 B.C.E., was a time of great change for the

people of the Americas. Generalized collectors colonized all areas of the Americas

during this time period (Scarre 2013, Chap. 9). As a result, life during this period

became more and more crowded and chaotic, and the people of this time period had to

develop ways of adapting to their environments.

Life for the people living in Western North America at the start of the Holocene

was easier than it would come to be later on during this time period. There was an

abundance of food during this time period, and so people had the luxury of not needing

to gather lower-order foods (Scarre 2013, Chap.9). “...patterns in Paleoindian bison

butchering differed significantly from those in later periods, which were marked by far

more thorough processing of bison carcasses” (Bamforth, 2011). This demonstrates

that the they had such an abundance of large game to hunt at the time, that they didn’t

need to utilize the entire animal, so they could focus on only the more desirable parts of

the animal. We notice a shift in this area during later times, as during the Middle

Archaic, environmental conditions change. They become more hot and dry, leading to

other methods of hunting and foraging, such as using nets to trap mountain goats and

sheep, and incorporating other game such as deer into their diet, to compensate for the

lack of bison that were available (Scarre 2013, Chap. 9). This is a trend that we will
continue to see throughout this time period, where because of various factors, people

need to adjust the way they go about conducting their lives.

The pictures that are painted of the various ways the people of North America

lived all throughout the Holocene are very diverse. There is a noticeable decrease in the

variety of megafauna that is found (Martin, 1967) as time goes on. This is noticed

around the time that the glaciers continued to retreat (Martin, 1967). As these are a

higher order food, people are more likely to want to hunt them, leading to over-hunting

and a subsequent disappearance of these types of game. The people of this time period

were very resourceful, however, and had already begun to diversify their diets, including

the potential cultivation of plants (Collins, 2006). Another factor involved in the collection

of food would be how heavily populated a region is. There is a lot of evidence of warfare

becoming more common as population sizes increase. “Clear manifestations of

hierarchical ranking, sedentism, and associated territorial competition...are phenomena

that postdate 1300 B.C.E. in California” (Scarre, 2013). It makes sense that as

territories were established among these groups, that it would lead to rising tensions

and increased likelihood of warfare, as this would lead to a scarcity of more desirable

resources. There is also a lot of evidence to suggest that the climate of this time period

was very variable, leading to the need of the people to be more adaptable to their

environment.

The climate all throughout the Holocene has been very chaotic and fluctuating,

especially for the relatively short amount of time that we have spent in this geological

time period (Auerbach, 2008). Thankfully, there is a resource that has gathered all of

the climatological data from this time period as best as we can. The service is called the
National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). They are able to use

various methods of study, including studying tree rings in certain locations, or the pollen

distribution as a way of determining similar climatic conditions (Auerbach, 2008).

Evidence of the affects this kind of change can have on a population can be found at

sites such as Clovis and Mustang Springs (Scarre, 2013). In this general area, there is

evidence of migration to other regions as a way of escaping undesirable climatic

conditions. For those that stayed, it would appear that the people went so far as to dig

water wells in order to compensate for the widespread drought that was experienced at

this time (Scarre, 2013). There is also evidence to suggest that the climate changed to

benefit some groups as well. Sites such as Anangula and Namu, have a lot of evidence

of a sophisticated reliance and use of maritime resources, that was most likely made

possible by a period of sea-level stability that started around 6500 B.C.E (Scarre, 2013).

It’s things like this that truly makes one appreciate the circumstances that these people

went through, and it makes it even more relevant that we find that they had time to

practice more spiritual aspects of life.

Relatively little is known about this more spiritual and abstract aspect of life in the

Americas during the Pliostene/Holocene transtition, because it is very rare to find sites

that help our understanding (Neves, W., Araujo, A., Bernardo, D., Kipnis, R., &

Feathers, J. 2012). However, one of the most fascinating pieces of art found from this

period is some rock art that is found at Lapa do Santo, a limestone rock shelter in

Eastern Brazil. Using radiocarbon dating, they were able to establish a minimum age of

9,370±40 BP, which puts this site directly at the transition of these two time periods

(Neves, W., Araujo, A., Bernardo, D., Kipnis, R., & Feathers, J. (2012). While there is a
lot of evidence that this site has been settled multiple times, using the stratigraphy they

were able to date it to this time period, as the main “matrix is mainly composed of wood

ashes derived from hearths established within the rock-shelter over the last 12.0 kyr”

(Neves, W., Araujo, A., Bernardo, D., Kipnis, R., & Feathers, J. (2012). The art itself

looks very ambiguous, but definitely appears to be some sort of human, as it appears to

have a head, torso, and all four limbs. It’s just amazing to try and imagine what the

person or people that constructed this were thinking when they made it.

This was a time period of chaotic upheaval for many in the Americas, and yet the

people were able to adapt and succeed through it all the same. The Holocene in the

Americas is one of the most interesting periods to study in human history, because it

covers a range of lifestyles, and covers multiple tool industries. It’s such a diverse time,

and really shows how willing to succeed the human spirit is.

Bibliography

Scarre, C. (2013). The Human Past: World Prehistory & the Development of
Human Societies. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd.

Neves, W., Araujo, A., Bernardo, D., Kipnis, R., & Feathers, J. (2012). Rock Art
at the Pleistocene/Holocene Boundary in Eastern South America. Plos ONE, 7(2),
e32228. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0032228
 Auerbach, B. (2008). Human skeletal variation in the New World during the
Holocene: Effects of climate and subsistence across geography and time - Part I.
Baltimore, Maryland: ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.

Bamforth, D. (2011). Origin Stories, archaeological evidence, and post-Clovis

Paleoindian bison hunting on the Great Plains. American Antiquity 76, 24-40

Martin, Paul S. 1967. Pleistocene overkill. In (Paul S Martin and Herbert E

Wright, Jr., editors): Pleistocene Extinctions: the search for a cause. New Haven, CT:
Yale Univ. Press, pp. 75-120.

Collins, Michael B. 2006. Discerning Clovis subsistence from stone artifacts and
site distributions on the southern Plains periphery. In (Renee B Walker and Boyce N
Driskell, editors): Foragers of the Terminal Pleistocene in North America. Lincoln, NE:
University of Nebraska Press, pp. 59-87.