The First Centuries after Clovis: A Review of Younger Dryas Western Stemmed Tradition Occupations in the Great Basin with a Focus on What They Can Tell Us about How and When Humans Colonized the Western United States

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Current Perspectives on the Western Stemmed Tradition-Clovis Debate in the Far West" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In recent years the number of researchers who argue that the Western Stemmed Tradition (WST) marks the descendants of colonizing populations who traveled along the Pacific Coast before moving inland has increased. The Paisley Caves and Cooper’s Ferry sites have provided compelling evidence that groups in the Intermountain West used WST points at around the same time that groups used fluted points on the Great Plains and the Southwest. In the centuries that followed the Clovis Era, additional WST sites were occupied for the first time. These sites provide snapshots of Paleoindian life during the last few centuries of the Pleistocene. In this presentation, I review what we know about WST lifeways during the Younger Dryas with a focus on what the earliest sites in the Intermountain West can tell us about how and when groups colonized the region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Current Perspectives on the Western Stemmed Tradition-Clovis Debate in the Far West   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24251