Tankersley, Kenneth B. (Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, Indiana University)
PATTERNS IN LITHIC RESOURCE PROCUREMENT AND EXPLOITATION AMONG
EARLY PALEO-INDIANS OF THE MIDWESTERN UNITED STATES
For the past 30 years scholars have used the lithic raw material
composition of fluted projectile point assemblages to evaluate
patterns in Paleo-Indian lithic resource procurement and settlement
mobility. Early investigators suggested that Paleo-Indians procured
only the highest quality lithic material from sources located
hundreds of kilometers from their hunting activities, thus they
were viewed as highly mobile in their settlement system. More
recently, a number of archaeologists have argued that although
Early Paleo-Indian groups in the eastern United States may have
concentrated on high quality lithic resources for the manufacture
of fluted projectile points, their settlement mobility was relatively
low, especially in areas displaying an unglaciated landscape. It has
been suggested that the fluted point assemblages of all Early
Paleo-Indian sites in the unglaciated eastern United States are
composed entirely of locally available lithic raw material. Based
on the petrographic analysis of more than 700 fluted points from
findspots in Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio, this paper defends the
position that Early Paleo-Indians in the Midwestern United States
exhibited a pattern of high settlement mobility, regardless of the
landscape. The geographic distribution of the most abundant and
highest quality lithic resource in Indiana, Wyandotte chert, whose
source is located in the unglaciated terrain of south central
Indiana, when plotted and compared with the distribution of fluted
projectile points manufactured from that resource illustrates a
pattern indicative of high mobility ( see Figure 5).[return to 1987 abstracts menu][continue to next]