New Perspectives in Folsom Archaeology

In the past decade, our knowledge of Folsom adaptations has improved dramatically. While Folsom peoples were undoubtedly highly mobile and hunted bison, work since the early 2000s has provided a much more nuanced view of their subsistence and settlement systems. Folsom sites located in a variety of environments (including the high elevation intermountain basins in the Rockies and the prairie woodlands east of the Great Plains) have shed new light on the diversity of Folsom lifeways, and analyses of new and extant collections have improved our understanding of Folsom technological organization. The primary goal of this symposium is to report on innovative recent research on Folsom technology, mobility, and settlement systems that adds insight to our reconstruction of Folsom adaptations. Individual papers within the session span a wide geographic range, include new methods for addressing variability in the Folsom archaeological record, and draw on concepts from a plethora of theoretical frameworks to contribute to a contemporary synthesis of how Folsom Paleoindians flourished during the Terminal Pleistocene.