Dena F. Dincauze

On the Pleistocene antiquity of Monte Verde, southern Chile

The potential importance of the Monte Verde site for the peopling of the New World prompted a detailed examination of the collections from that locality, as well as a site visit in January 1997 by a group of Paleoindian specialists. It is the consensus of that group that the MV-II occupation at the site is both archaeological and 12,500 years old, as T. Dillehay has argued. The status of the potentially even older material at the site (MV-1, ∼ 33,000 B.P.) remains unresolved.

Fluted Points in the Eastern Forests

East of the Mississippi River, fluted points with general morphological and technological relationships to western Clovis and Folsom types are widespread and numerous, although their geological and biological contexts are very different. They occur in natural settings so diverse as to defy generalizations about cultural adaptations by archaeologists just as they must have defied traditional patterns of behavior by the people who produced and used the fluted points. The chronology of early Paleo-Indian appearance and subsequent dispersal in the eastern forests is very poorly known. Radiocarbon dates, all in the 11th millennium B.p. (Haynes et al. 1984), are available only in and near the northern deglaciated areas, where the earliest eastern fluted points are not expected. The available dates indicate that fluted point styles in the East may span the 11th millennium B.P. By 10,000 years ago, the beginning of the Holocene, fluted points were no longer made.

Early and Middle Archaic Site Distributions and Habitats in Southern New England

Accumulating data on cultural remains of the Early and Middle Archaic periods (ca. 10,000-6,000 B.P.) indicate that the time has come for a fresh look at the early postglacial habitats that supported these human communities, who were inhabiting southern New England, probably continuously, during that time. For the earlier 2,000 years, the evidence for human occupancy is scattered and relatively sparse, but by no means negligible. Between 8,000 and 6,000 B.P., the data indicate well-established communities of hunter-gatherers throughout the region; their exploitative activities directly anticipate subsistence patterns that characterized the following Late Archaic period. This paper is an initial exposition of currently available data on cultural distributions and habitat characteristics for the Early and Middle Archaic periods of southern New England. It is a programmatic statement of research now underway, rather than a summary of conclusions.

Strategies for Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction in Archaeology

Publisher Summary This chapter reviews the strategies for paleoenvironmental reconstruction in archaeology. Paleoenvironmental reconstruction in archaeology is the description of change in the physical and biological contexts of human existence. It is an aspect of, and an essential precursor to, paleoecology, the study of environmental relationships in the past. A productive archaeological approach to the reconstruction of paleoenvironments requires fundamentally an understanding that environmental determinism is neither the inspiration nor the goal. Once past that barrier, there need be no apology for undertaking environmental studies within a framework of ecological theory. Ecological hypotheses are not intrinsically better than other hypotheses, but they certainly are extraordinarily useful in providing the understanding of the past. It is the scientific productivity of the ecological perspective on human lives that has fascinated archaeologists and that should continue to challenge them to explore the past with imagination tempered with rigor and impartiality. The goal is knowledge of fully human responses to environmental stressors and opportunities, which cannot be achieved unless those are understood in their diversity.

Regarding Pendejo Cave: Response to Chrisman et al

Personal experience in Pendejo Cave and in the laboratory supporting the investigations there bears directly on claims for stratigraphic integrity forwarded by the authors of a report on ancient friction skin imprints. The pulblished report is seriouslv incongruent with ttmy notes and recollections. The statement that my work indicated no intrusions directly above the first recovery of imprints contradicts the fact that I spent nmy excavation time there clearing a lartge rodent burrow that penetrated to the layer in wihich the find was made. Abundant cultural remains of Holocene age in the upperimost strata of the cave constitute potential sources for anthropogenic itemns of all kinds that could have been intruded to great depths by burrowing fauna. Data supporting dismissal of such possibilities must be presented by the investigators on a firmer basis than given in their 1996 report.