Paleoindian

An overview of the archaeological data produced over the last decades for Brazil, coupled with a background of recent paleoenvironmentalstudies, suggests that during the mid-Holocene vast areas of Central Brazil ceased to be occupied by human groups. Independent data from dated human skeletons, rock-shelter stratigraphy, and chronology of open-air sites converge to support the inference that these areas were depopulated or altogether abandoned. Paleoenvironmental data suggest that dryness events constitute the major cause behind the observed trends. This
phenomenon expands the already perceived notion that climatic stresses had a major role in the shaping of human settlement patterns in marginal environments, such as deserts and high-altitude settings.

This report details an archaeological survey and testing program conducted at the Georgia Power Company's Flint River Project in Albany, Georgia, in June 1982. The project was required to satisfy licensing requirements for day-use public recreation facilities within the Flint River Project. The survey and testing were conducted by Soil Systems, Inc. (SSI) assisted by the Georgia Power Company archaeologist. Two archaeological sites were 'located by the survey. The first, Site 20055-1, was a dense Late Paleo-Indian to Late Archaic lithic scatter and the second, Site 20055-2, was a potentially stratified Woodland-Mississippian site. In consultation with Georgia Power Company representatives, the first site was archaeological ly tested. The second was recommended for avoidance by ground disturbing activities based on the results of the survey. Upon conclusion of testing, the first site was also recommended for avoidance. These recommendations were based upon the clear potential of each site to supply significant data on the prehistoric occupation of the locality and region. Both sites appear to be eligible for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places. Beyond avoidance, it was also recommended that both sites be intensively investigated prior to any future construction activity and that the sites be protected from relic collectors. If the sites cannot be protected from relic collectors, it is strongly recommended that intensive archaeological investigations be conducted to recover highly important and irreplaceable archaeological information.

If there were geese anywhere in the universe besides earth, we should probably expect to find them in the constellation Vulpecula. Vulpecula the Fox was contrived by Johannes Hevelius, the famous Polish astronomer who was based in Gdansk in the seventeenth century. Hevelius originally named this constellation Vulpecula & Anser, or the Fox & Goose. It’s no longer possible, however, to take a gander at the Goose. The Goose is long gone, ingested by the Fox in whose jaws Hevelius mapped its neck. Vulpecula is located right next to Cygnus the Swan, and for this 2005 Boeing Science Writing Contest article, Bernie Taylor has allowed those extraterrestrial geese to migrate to an imagined planet in the Swan, Cygnus 3. Bernie Taylor is a quantitatively-minded naturalist living in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. His 2004 book, Biological Time, examines the rhythms that regulate the lives of animals and plants and documents as well as ancient and indigenous knowledge of these natural cycles.
Some of these biological rhythms are modulated by celestial phenomena, and so Mr. Taylor asks whether different astronomical circumstances would alter the behavior of geese on another world or even eliminate the possibility of their existence. His imaginary planet in some ways parallels the earth. It is the third planet from its sun, a solar-like star in Cygnus. Notwithstanding the similarity of Cygnus 3 to earth, looking for geese on that planet could be a wild-goose chase.
The ancients imagined the constellation Cygnus as a swan in flight, headed south. They linked its seasonal departure from the night sky to the autumn migration of water fowl. Our failure to find any geese on Cygnus 3 wouldn't necessarily mean they don’t exist. They could, after all, have just gone south on us. What’s good for the Goose is sauce for the Swan. —E.C. Krupp, Director of the Griffith Observatory

This article investigates changing lake levels in the late Pleistocene eastern Great Lakes in order to gain insights into the Early Palaeo-Indian occupations. Significant new information bearing on lake level history is provided, notably the first well-documented deposits of a high water level above modern in the ca. 11,000-10,300 B.P. period in the southern Lake Huron basin. The lake level information, along with paleoenvironmental and site data, reinforces site age estimates to the 11th millennium B.P.; suggests significant numbers of sites have been inundated by rising water levels; provides specific information on the setting of archaeological sites such as placing the Parkhill site adjacent to a large lake estuary; indicates reasons for the attractiveness of shorelines to Palaeo-Indians including persistence of more open areas conducive to higher game productivity; and points to ideal areas for future archaeological site survey, particularly in the Lake Erie drainage. ᭧

Recently, advocates of an “older-than-Clovis” occupation of eastern North America have suggested that bi-pointed leaf-shaped lanceolate stone bifaces provide definitive evidence of human culture on the eastern seaboard prior to the Late Glacial Maximum (LGM).  This argument hinges on two observations: First, that points of this form are exceedingly rare in the East, and second, that all known occurrences of these point forms are from landforms or depositional environments dating to some time before the late Pleistocene.  Neither of these observations is supported by the archaeological record.  Bi-pointed leaf shaped blades have been recovered from throughout the Middle Atlantic and Northeast, where they have been repeatedly dated, either radiometrically or by association with diagnostic artifacts, to between the Late Archaic and the Early Woodland.  Statistical analysis of supposed “older-than-Clovis” leaf-shaped blades demonstrates that there are no significant differences in morphology between them and unequivocally Middle Holocene material culture.  Until such time as evidence demonstrates otherwise, there is no reason to accept that these leaf-shaped bifaces are diagnostic of a Pleistocene, much less pre-LGM, occupation in eastern North America.

Presentation for local history and archaeology groups about the formation of the Alabama Archaeological Society, their early work and may of their prominent members.  This paper/presentation may not be copied, referenced or used in any form without the explicit permission of the author.  All photographs are protected by copyright.

Red chert attributed to the Munsungun Lake geologic formation located in northern Maine is common in terminal-Pleistocene, fluted-point-period lithic assemblages throughout New England. A visually identical material also appears in some later-period sites in coastal Maine. Until recently no bedrock source for this red chert showing convincing evidence of precontact use was known. Here we present the NKP site complex, a series of quarry-related stone-tool-manufacturing workshop sites associated with outcrops of high-quality red/green chert. These outcrops represent the only known source of this material with evidence of precontact human use within the Munsungun Lake formation. Although unequivocal fluted-point-period artifacts, such as fluted bifaces, are not yet documented at the NKP complex, the recurrent appearance of red Munsungun chert in fluted-point-period lithic assemblages in New England suggests the manufacture of fluted points took place in the vicinity of these outcrops.

This report continues the author’s research on the location, status and artifact inventories of Paleoindian sites in Northern Alabama (c.f. Cole 2006) by providing a summary of the site data for Madison County, Alabama, and providing a comparison of the findings to that of neighboring Limestone County. Using data from private collections, the author seeks to answer three questions in this study. First, how can researchers use this data to identify high density sites prior to their impact? Second, how did Early Paleoindian groups choose their site locations, and finally, how can researchers identify how their foraging cycle may have looked?

This work has been made possible by the generous sharing of primary data by a number of researchers including site level provenience of Paleoindian artifact finds. These records have been added to the Alabama Paleoindian Point Survey and the Alabama State Site File so that future investigators can continue to study these important sites and artifacts.

This paper argues that the Rocky Mountains played a significantly more important role in the process of the peopling of the New World than archaeologists have traditionally recognized. Although First Americans did not reach the Rockies before they set foot in any other New World regiondthey could not have, regardless of their point of entrydby Clovis time, evidence suggests that Clovis people knew the Rocky Mountain landscape intimately. Archaeologists should have long anticipated this, given the many resources the Rocky Mountains offer that adjacent, albeit archaeologically better-known regions such as the Plains and some parts of the Far West do not; at least not as ubiquitously. These include plentiful water in the form of streams, lakes, snowpack, and glaciers; high-quality sources of obsidian, chert, quartzite and other knappable stone; and a vertically oriented landscape that maximizes floral and faunal diversity within comparatively condensed space. Two other non-economic characteristics likely contributed significantly to the appeal of the Rocky Mountains to some First Americans: the power and sanctity nearly all humans attribute to mountains, and the seemingly little-recognized fact that northeast Asian Upper Paleolithic people who populated the New World during the terminal Pleistocene occupied mountainous landscapes for some 45,000 years prior to their departure. For many First Americans, mountainsdnot the flat, windswept tundra of Si-berian stereotypesdhad always been home. Evidence for the familiarity of Clovis groups with the Rocky Mountain landscapes comes principally from three Clovis caches: Anzick, Fenn, and Mahaffy. All three caches are located in the Rockies, collectively contain artifacts made from ten of the highest-quality stone raw materials available in the Southern, Central and Northern Rockies, and at least one of the caches accompanies the burial of a young child who appears to have been interred intentionally on a prominent and likely sacred landform in a mountain valley. Bringing the paper's argument full circle, that same child's genetic profile shows a direct link to that of another youngster buried thousands of years earlier at the Late Glacial Maximum Mal'ta site in the mountainous Trans-Baikal region of Siberia.

The purpose of this paper is to help the reader understand the general envi-rons of Paleoindian sites in the Middle Tennessee Valley, specifically in Limestone County, Alabama, as well as some of the history surrounding them. It is common knowledge that these sites exist in large numbers and varieties in this area, but little has been written on the subject. It is hoped that by providing this information an interest in the study, excavation, reporting, and preservation of these important sites can be accomplished.

The recent proposal that North America was first settled by Upper Palaeolithic people from Europe who crossed the Atlantic along the edge of the Arctic ice sheet has generated considerable controversy. Here Michael O'Brien and colleagues challenge the evidence that has been presented in support of that hypothesis. There follows a response by Dennis Stanford and Bruce Bradley, and a closing reply from O'Brien et al.

This is a presentation that I give to local history and archaeology groups.  The presentation provides background and context for the well known Quad Site Paleoindian Locality.  This paper/presentation may not be copied, referenced or used in any form without the explicit permission of the author.  All photographs are protected by copyright.

The prevailing archaeological consensus on Paleoindian origins and colonization of the Americas has been shaken by recent wide acknowledgment of pre-Clovis occupation at Monte Verde, Chile, and by claims that ostensibly non-Mongoloid skeletal remains might represent a precursor population. Recent mitochondrial DNA studies have been interpreted by some as indicating an earlier and more complex peopling of the continent. This paper reviews the current archaeological and biological evidence, in America and northern Asia, for the origins of Native Americans, assesses models of the colonization process in the light of new data and a revised chronology, and suggests avenues for future research.

This dissertation involves the development of a geologic framework applied to upper Pleistocene and earliest Holocene archaeological site discovery. It is argued that efforts to identify colonizer archaeological sites require knowledge of geologic processes, Quaternary stratigraphic detail and an understanding of basic soil science principles. An overview of Quaternary geologic deposits based on previous work in the region is
presented. This is augmented by original research which presents a new, proposed regional pedostratigraphic framework, a new source of lithic raw material, the Beezley chalcedony, and details of a new cache of lithic tools with Paleoindian affinities made from this previously undescribed stone source.

Clovis is the best known early development in North America but its lithic technology is poorly documented and often from animal kill sites. This evidence has been used to picture Clovis peoples as mobile, colonizing, big-game hunters and explanations of lithic technological practices have been framed largely in materialist terms. Increasing documentation suggests views about how the complex Clovis biface and blade production strategies relate to subsistence, land use, and specific kinds of mobility patterns are questionable and often difficult to test with archaeological data. We need to seriously consider the role of Clovis people's worldview in structuring their thought and technical actions.

This report documents and analyzes two distinct assemblages from a pair of Paleoindian and Early Archaic localities in north Alabama.  It resulted from an interesting discovery at MA85, a site in the uplands of Madison County, Alabama, where Tuscumbia (St. Louis) and Monteagle (St. Genevive) cherts were equally abundant to Fort Payne in the projectile point and toolmaking industries.  This was believed to be in sharp contrast with the author’s collections from other early sites, in particular his collection from Heaven’s Half Acre in Colbert County, a site only a few miles from the Tennessee River.  In both collections, the author used a non-discriminative collecting methodology, allowing materials used at these two important localities to be analyzed for both site function and raw material preference.  Findings suggest both localities served as processing, tool making and reduction sites, possibly even quarries, and that the preference for Tuscumbia and Monteagle at MA85 versus Fort Payne at Heaven’s Half Acre was a function of strategy.  It is hoped that providing this information will tell us more about early life in the Tennessee Valley from the Pleistocene through the Early Holocene.

This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues. Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party websites are prohibited. In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or institutional repository. Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier's archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit: http://www.elsevier.com/copyright a b s t r a c t Advances in large-scale paleogeographic reconstruction define physical and environmental constraints relevant to understanding the timing and character of the first colonization of the Americas during the late Pleistocene. Diachronic mapping shows continental glaciers coalesced in central Canada during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) 20,000e14,000 years ago while unglaciated refugia existed along the Northwest Coast. The Bering Land Bridge connected Asia and North America until about 10,000 years ago when the two continents were separated by rising sea level. This visual analysis from large-scale synthesis of recent geological and environmental research establishes timelines for biotically viable colonization corridors connecting eastern Beringia to southern North America and provides insights into probable Paleoindian origins and subsistence strategies.

This essay addresses the contentious issue of collaboration between archaeologists and artifact collectors.  I argue that in many instances, alienating members of the collecting public is not just bad practice; such alienation itself violates the Society for American Archaeology's "Principles of Archaeological Ethics."  I make my case by first exploring SAA's ethical code. I focus initially on "stewardship" and "commercialization," which many cite as reasons for rejecting relationships with artifact collectors.  I then discuss others of SAA's principles that support the contention that archaeologists should actively reach out to citizens with private collections
whenever possible.

Second, I present a case study exploring what the Clovis
archaeological record might look like had archaeologists rejected the overtures of a century of collectors who brought Pleistocene finds to the attention of professionals.  Had practitioners accepted only those Clovis sites free of collector involvement, our understanding of Clovis lifeways would be quite different than it is today.  The essay has two messages. First, collectors can and have advanced archaeology by reaching out to archaeologists willing to reach back. Second our own code of ethics suggests that responsibly engaging artifact collectors is not just "okay," it is its own ethical imperative.

late 1920s, peopling archaeology has sought to understand the earliest human occupants of the Western Hemisphere. Three generations of practitioners have made great strides in the techno-environmental arena. However, we have largely failed to tap into PaleoIndigenous intellectual, emotional, and social lives-the very domains that made Ice Age people as fully human as we are. As a result, our interpretations of those pioneering populations could often apply as readily to a colony of ants or a herd of wildebeest as they do to living, breathing, thinking, dreaming, loving, striving human ancestors. This article first explores the reasons for our failure to fully actualize First Peoples, identifying and implicating a feedback loop that includes practitioner homogeneity (we have always been and continue to be disproportionately white men of European descent); our predominantly positivist worldview; our language, training, and practice; and even the limited nature of the material record we study. This article also, however, highlights the ways that an important minority of peopling scholars have sought to access the humanity of PaleoIndigenous people. By more consistently mobilizing our own human capacity to creatively interrogate the deep past, we will produce scholarship that more consistently recognizes the capacity of the people who lived it and, just as importantly, respects those living today.

This paper presents a comparative study of two colonizing populations in the Americas: the Fluted Point tradition (FPt) and the early Arctic Small Tool tradition (ASTt) with the aim of understanding the role of lithic technologies in the colonization process. The FPt and ASTt are seen as residentially mobile groups with comparatively little reliance on food storage and minimal transportation aids. At the same time they also produced very similar flaked stone technologies that differed greatly from all later groups, being characterized by standardized core reduction, excellence in manufacture, production of a wide range of often hafted tools, use of the highest quality toolstones and a reliance on flaked stone, as opposed to ground stone, tools. The main advantage of these technologies is that they are not only flexible but can be rapidly produced. It is suggested that the key variable accounting for these choices is the lack of efficient transportation aids. In colonizing situations, the limited transport capabilities force populations to: (a) rely more on less predictable search and encounter methods of resource procurement and in turn, residential mobility to position people with regard to resources and (b) place a high premium on efficient time allocation to meet the excessive demands needed to maintain social contacts and mating networks amongst very low density populations.

Keywords: hunter-gatherers, colonization, lithic technology, settlement systems, subsistence, transportation aids, Paleoindian, Paleoeskimo, Thule.

Located within the driftless area of southwestern Wisconsin, the Withington site provides a unique opportunity to examine the adaptive responses of Early Paleoindians exploiting this region. With a lithic assemblage dominated by Hixton Silicified Sandstone from sources over 170km to the north, chipped stone technological attributes and raw material diversity suggest that the occupants of the site were highly mobile, employed a mixed organizational strategy of toolstone transport, and possessed a wide knowledge of the lithic and social landscape. While our recent understanding of the early archaeological record of this region has progressed, a lack of published reports continues to hinder the incorporation of data from this area into larger models of Early Paleoindian subsistence and settlement. As part of an on-going research effort to address this, I present here a report and analysis of lithic material recovered from the site.

The recent proposal that North America was first settled by Upper Palaeolithic people from Europe who crossed the Atlantic along the edge of the Arctic ice sheet has generated considerable controversy. Here Michael O'Brien and colleagues challenge the evidence that has been presented in support of that hypothesis. There follows a response by Dennis Stanford and Bruce Bradley, and a closing reply from O'Brien et al.

This report documents the results of Class III archeological survey of 134 acres for proposed mining project in the Star Lake area of McKinley County, New Mexico. Michael Meyer of Mineris Vitae, LLC contracted with the Office of Contract Archeology, University of New Mexico to perform the survey. The project area is located in Section 2, T19N, R6W of the Star Lake USGS Quadrangle, McKinley County, New Mexico. The survey resulted in the documentation of 22 sites and 23 isolated occurrences. The fieldwork was performed between March 5 th -15th, 2012. Of the 22 documented sites, four are recommended as eligible for the inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places, twelve are recommended as not eligible while the eligibility recommendation for the remaining seven is undetermined. v vi

"Distance and direction to source data were compiled on the main toolstones employed at 83 Paleoindian sites with concave-based points (ca. 11,000–10,000 B.P.) from across the recently deglaciated Great Lake-Northeastern area of North America. These data were used in order to more rigorously evaluate several much debated ideas about annual range mobility scale and land use patterns and how they changed over time as these groups colonized and settled into the area. Movements are significantly biased to north–south axes, strongly suggesting these represent mainly seasonal moves and procurement of toolstones during regular travels rather than by specialized task groups. Means of comparing the scale of range mobility to ethnographic norms are explored and the results clearly show that these groups, especially the earliest occupants, had large annual range mobility scales and distinctive patterns of land use that are rarely seen or approached historically. They had to have been intensively targeting widely spaced but relatively abundant resources on the landscape. The only ethnographic groups who come close to such patterns historically were all caribou hunters, a perspective consistent with the idea these groups regularly exploited that resource. As long suggested, these land use patterns are probably related to the colonization of new lands in which there were little or no existing populations.

Keywords: hunter-gatherers, colonization, lithic technology, settlement systems, subsistence, transportation aids, Paleoindian.

O n a continental scale, Clovis subsistence strategies are oft en characterized by the hunting of large game. Although diff erences in early Paleoindian subsistence choices between western and eastern North America appear to exist, this assertion remains controversial. While no one would attempt to defi ne "Clovis" by subsistence strategy alone, subsistence practices have fi gured prominently in discussions of Clovis adaptations and behaviors (e.g., Kelly and Todd ; Martin ; Mason ). For these reasons, identifying variation, or lack thereof, in Clovis subsistence strategies becomes essential to our understanding of whether the continent-wide presence of "Clovis" technology represents a homogenous adaptive strategy or a combination of diff erent regional adaptations and subsistence choices. Further, we must understand whether Clovis subsistence adaptations are really diff erent from those associated with later fl uted point traditions.

Artifacts from eight locations in the Thedford embayment area have been modified by the post-glacial waters of the Lake Nipissing phase prior to about 4000 to 4500 years ago. The location of these sites relative to other inferred pre-Nipissing strandlines in the region and detailed external artifact comparisons provide new' information on the age and sequence of early preceramic occupations in the lower Great Lakes.

In a recent American Antiquity forum (Pitblado 2014), I argued that not only is it possible for archaeologists to engage in ethical collaborations with members of the artifact-collecting public, but that the Society for American Archaeology’s “Principles of Archaeological Ethics” stipulates that we should do so. This is not a message, however, that has fully permeated the archaeological community, which has led to a schism between populations who are often natural allies. This paper starts with that premise: that archaeologists should actively pursue collaborations with the artifact-collecting community with the goal of advancing research agendas, public education, and long-term care of collections in private hands. The paper offers guidelines for establishing and nurturing professional-collector relationships in a way that furthers the directives of legal and ethical archaeological codes. I begin with an overview of the changing nature of professional-collector relationships during the twentieth century, exploring reasons for the divisiveness that has characterized recent decades. I next suggest five steps for establishing appropriate relationships with artifact collectors—and avoiding inappropriate ones. Finally, I describe how I followed those steps to establish a network of collector-collaborators to build the foundation for a Paleoamerican research program in southeastern Idaho and northern Utah.

A key tenet of Clovis period hunteregatherer mobility is the utilization of large ranges based on the appearance of exotic raw materials, particularly chert, in Clovis assemblages. The identification of the sources of chert in Clovis period assemblages is problematic as it has relied on macroscopic properties. Macroscopic characteristics of chert can be highly variable in a single outcrop, occur across very large areas, and have correlates in unrelated and far removed contexts. An instrumental geochemical approach was utilized that potentially offers advances in the capacity to link chert artifacts to their sources. Trace element data was recovered from 33 Clovis period projectile points from the Gault Site (41BL323) using Laser Ablation-Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS). This data was compared to trace element data recovered from 224 primary geologic samples of chert from multiple primary sources across the Edwards Plateau in Texas. The Clovis points were compared to the geologic sources using canonical discriminant analysis to establish group membership at three spatial scales: macro-regional (greater than 500 km), regional (between 30 and 500 km), and local (between 1 and 30 km). It was found at the macro-regional scale that 21 of the 33 Clovis points were to be geochemically similar to Edwards Plateau sources. At the regional scale, 15 of the 21 identified Edwards Plateau Clovis points could be attributed to a particular source. Lastly, only two Clovis points could be identified to particular sources at the local scale.

North American fluted projectile points are the quintessential temporally diagnostic artifacts, occurring over a relatively short time span, from ca. 13,300 calBP to ca. 11,900 calBP, commonly referred to as the Early Paleoindian period. Painting with a broad brush, points from the Plains and Southwest exhibit less diversity in shape than what is found in the East, especially for the later half of the Early Paleoindian period. It remains unclear how various fluted-point forms relate to each other and whether the continent-wide occurrence of the earliest fluted-point forms represents a single cultural expression, albeit with regional differences. We used phylogenetic analysis to evaluate fluted-point classes from the eastern United States. Preliminary results suggest that there is both temporal and spatial patterning of some classes and that much of the variation in form has to do with modifications to hafting elements. Although our analyses are presently at a coarse scale, it appears that different kinds of learning could contribute in part to regional differences in point shape.

Nogahabara I is a late Pleistocene age archaeological site located in interior northwestern Alaska. In contrast to most archaeological assemblages left by mobile hunter-gatherers, which consist largely of manufacturing debris and a few worn or broken tools, the site contains 267 largely whole, useful tools, which we interpret as a lost or abandoned toolkit. As a snapshot of the tools carried by an individual or small group during an archaeological instant, the toolkit offers insights into specific technological behaviors and general processes that influence the formation of lithic assemblages. The toolkit exhibits a surprisingly wide range of tool forms and production technologies. It also shows direct archaeological evidence of transport and episodic use and maintenance of tools and cores. This evidence suggests intensive toolstone conservation that would have reduced the frequency with which toolkit depletion would have forced people to re-provision. One implication of these behaviors is that lithic assemblages left scattered across the landscape should be highly variable. Another is that there are profound differences between systemic toolkits and the archaeological assemblages from which they are derived.

The impact of the Younger Dryas (12,850–11,700 cal yr BP) on Paleoindian populations has been widely debated in the literature. In the Middle Atlantic region of the United States, fluctuations in alluvial and eolian deposition suggest abrupt environmental changes before and after Clovis (13,100–12,800 cal yr BP). In this case study, we examine changes in fluted point frequencies and sediment deposition. Our results show a decline in post-Clovis fluted point forms compared to Clovis. These data are comparable to other studies that suggest a reduction in human populations or population reorganization following Younger Dryas onset. By examining changes in depositional patterns and fluted point frequencies we see no evidence that landscape stability
influenced the use of select drainage basins by Paleoindians. Judged by a general decrease in fluted points the most parsimonious interpretation is that climatic change affected human populations in the Middle Atlantic region.