Explaining Shifts in Dalton Paleoindian Adaptations at the End of the Pleistocene through Usewear and Technological Organization Analyses

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

During the Late Paleoindian period in North America approximately 12,000 years ago, Dalton hunter-gatherers substantially altered their hunting technology by modifying their point blades with teeth-like serrations and bevels. The functions of these attributes have been the focus of a long-held debate. Some argue that the variation relates to use as knives and drills, showing an adaptive shift to processing smaller game like deer, and others suggest these new attributes were crafted only to tip darts of an atlatl for projectile hunting. Investigating the functions of these points is critical for understanding how humans technologically adapted to a return to glacial-like conditions and the extinction of megafauna at the end Pleistocene. In this study, we use experimentation to build analogues for interpreting usewear traces on an archaeological Dalton point assemblage. We then consider changes in point functionality within the broader context of the organization of Dalton lithic technology and how these changes reflect adaptations to the emerging Holocene environment.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 26070