The Pleistocene-Holocene Transition in the Tennessee and Cumberland River Valleys of the Mid-South United States

Summary

The Tennessee and Cumberland River Valleys have a rich history of archaeological research and provide a valuable dataset for exploring the relationship between climate and culture during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. In this paper, we provide an overview of available archaeological and environmental data in this area, and argue that there were significant changes in diet, technological organization, and landscape use that are most likely related to environmental change. Home to some of the largest and most heavily collected Clovis assemblages in North America, adaptations during the subsequent Younger Dryas period/chronozone and immediately after, during the early centuries of the Holocene, are much less well known away from cave and rockshelter sites. Analyses of site distributions indicate an expansion of settlement into areas previously largely ignored, probably a result of population growth. We conclude by highlighting recent, ongoing research in the region, and provide some future directions for continuing research for this time interval in the Mid-South.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Human adaptations to environmental change during the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene - Part 2

Keywords

Spatial Coverage