There is, however, no debate over the presence of certain humans in the American Southwest by approximately 9500 B.C., or about 11,500 years ago. These people were members of the so-called Clovis Culture, and Clovis Culture can be observed across a very wide portion of the present United States, extending all the way into the present states of Vermont and New Hampshire. These people are called Paleoindians, and the period in which they lived is called the Late Pleistocene. This was the period of time when the great glaciers occupying most of Canada and portions of Alaska and the United States (the so-called Wisconsin Ice Age) were receding for the last time. South of the melting glaciers, the land was being turned into huge relatively shallow lakes that were everywhere surrounded by grasslands. While the Pleistocene had been dominated by large mammals like the Wooly Mammoth, these were now undergoing significant stress because of substantial climate changes and consequent loss of food sources. The Paleoindians were fully adapted to hunting these large mammals so they too were experiencing stress as the mammoths and other game animals migrated northward, following the receding glaciers. In less than a millennium, Clovis Culture was replaced by the Folsum Culture, as indicated by the replacement of the large Clovis spear point with a smaller, lighter Folsum atlatl point, clearly designed for hunting smaller and swifter animals.
While the traditional belief about Paleoindians is that they migrated across the "Land Bridge" between Alaska and Siberia in pursuit of big game animals, it is equally possible that Clovis and Folsum Cultures represent the end of much older Paleoindian cultures that had been well established for many millennia in the milder climates of Central and South America. On this line of speculation, what we see in the Clovis Culture is Paleoindians migrating northward, following the receding glaciers and big game animals towards their ultimate extinction. The technological developments of finely crafted fluted spear and atlatl points represents a necessary step in the adjustment of these people to substantial climatic change and the consequent changes in huntable fauna. (It is noteworthy that fluted points were never made in the Old World.) Traces of this culture are found along a north-south line in Central Canada as well as along the northern parts of Alaska.
Paleoindian sites have been excavated extensively in Southern California (San Diego area), throughout the Southwest, and across the Middlewest into the Northeast. Few (if any) sites have been discovered in the Great Basin. This is consistent with a picture of Paleoindians living along the southern edges of receding glaciers in grasslands dotted with broad, shallow lakes. The landscape was dotted with diminishing numbers of the great Pleistocene animals, traditional targets of opportunity for the Paleoindians. As a consequence, they were forced to live in a nomadic relationship with these animals, following them as they drifted north and from lake to lake. Few sites represent long-term established habitations; rather, they were hunting camps from which local resources of wood, green plant food, and game animals were exploited so long as they lasted. Populations were small and hunting camps were probably occupied only by extended families, including perhaps a few non-family members (perhaps with no family of their own remaining). It was a period of tremendous climatic change, stressing all flora and fauna. Waves of very dry weather alternated with waves of exceptionally wet weather. The lakes expanded and contracted. Great inland lakes, like Owens Lake (in eastern California) filled to the brim and overflowed, cutting gorges down into China Lake Basin and out into the Mojave Desert. Chartkoff and Chartkoff suggest that the Paleoindian lifeway is typical of "pioneers," people who have a single well established mode of survival which they carry with them wherever they go. With their emphasis on game-animal hunting, they expressed a "focal economy;" forced to travel lightly, they practiced a "universal technology," a few tools having diverse applications.
By about 10,000 years ago (8000 B.C.), the earth's warming trend and consequent glacial retreat had released sufficient water back into the oceans so that the land-connection between Siberia and Alaska was severed. As the oceans rose, the Chukchi and Bering Seas encroached further upon the landscape and left only one region, the Bering Strait, where Siberia and Alaska are within about 100 kilometers of each other. Paleoindian lifeways continued for no more than another one thousand years. By that time, one surmises, climate had changed so much that flora and fauna were completely different. The great Late Pleistocene lakes were receding toward the smaller lakes of modern times (Mono Lake, Pyramid Lake, Great Salt Lake, and the Great Lakes). Marshes and grasslands had dried out extensively and forests were beginning to take over the landscape. The complexity of new landscapes provided new opportunities to hunter-gatherers but also began an extraordinary epoch of geographic differentiation. Paleoindian life showed little or no differentiation from place to place throughout North America; the so-called Archaic Indian life which followed (from 7000 to 6000 B.C. onward) demonstrated significant differences from place to place, indicating specific ways in which people adapted to change and exploited local environments.
Archaeologists use the term 'archaic' in a variety of different ways. For some it means any indigenous lifeway of hunting and gathering that precedes agriculture and animal husbandry. Since some people in North America remained hunter-gatherers until Europeans intruded upon them, this would mean that the archaic tradition had never ended for them. Other archaeologists, however, have suggested criteria other than agriculture which allow more interesting distinctions. Chartkoff & Chartkoff, for instance, suggest that the emergence of staple foods, even though hunted or gathered, allowed people to settle into localities, assume sedentary lifeways, and fundamentally change their social traditions. In California, for instance, most people passed beyond typical archaic lifeways into what the Chartkoffs call the Pacific Period of cultural development by at least 2000 B.C. Societies that originated during this period of time, by adjustment to local ecological features, survived in tact until interruption by Europeans, beginning in the 16th Century A.D. (Just for comparison, this is roughly the period, in the Middle East, when writing began to develop.) True archaic life lasted at least four millennia, then, from 6000 B.C. until 2000 B.C. In the Great Basin it lasted until the middle of the 19th Century A.D. But what characterized this kind of life?
Archaic life was, in fact, the consequence of a revolution in human science and technology. People stopped living as nomads and began living in patterns of "annual rounds." Rather than merely drifting, they proceeded along a determined path of annual harvesting. They were essentially "residential" along this path, usually building their most permanent residencies in their wintering places. Thus, several residences were arranged strategically so that resources in different areas could be exploited when they were available. Throughout the West this was an especially easy plan for life within a relatively small locality because the altitude differences between valley meadows and mountain tops provided an entire spectrum of flora and fauna, tuned to seasonal changes, all within relatively short distances.
As a technological development, the archaic lifeway represented a tremendous increase in knowledge about basic geography, seasons, topography, flora, and fauna. Humans learned about new foods and developed new tools with a higher level of specialization for hunting, gathering, and processing these foods. In this sense, they developed diffuse economies and specialized technologies. Archaic sites can be recognized by their greater complexity --- longer habitation and greater variety of plant and animal remains as well as many more kinds of tools. Detailed knowledge had to be acquired, assimilated, and passed from generation to generation. People needed to understand the details of weather, seasons, flora, and fauna for each region within their range of access. They needed to know how long a particular season would last, normally, in a particular locality; on top of that, they needed to know how many people could be fed by certain food resources and for how long. Thus, the annual round could be planned out and central residence localities could be selected. Furthermore, there had to be substantial social development so that groups of people could be informed about movements through the round and kept up-to-date about current conditions.
Since the people would face different resource opportunities in different localities, they would have to develop specialized skills appropriate to each and this would include special tools for new tasks. Overall, the role of women increased considerably in the archaic period since gathering plant foods became significantly more important and women were responsible for gathering, food processing, and manufacture of certain utilities (baskets, etc.). Sound practical judgment tended to suggest that a man could not easily survive in an archaic culture without a woman partner. In social customs this occasionally led to polygamous marriages, where economic security was served by shared relationships. Social groups, or villages, also grew larger during the archaic tradition. There were some regions in which group hunts were more effective than individual hunting skills. Also, villages based on extended family relationships tended to offer another dimension of economic security.
Throughout any long period of development, archaeologists can locate what they call "horizons." These are moments in time when a specific invention or development so revolutionizes life that most other aspects of social and economic life change in compensating ways. These inventions also become significant new paradigms for human life so that, once established in these, people do not return to older tools or techniques. One such horizon of importance in the archaic tradition is the "grinding stone horizon." Invention of the grinding stone meant that seeds of many kinds could be ground into meal which could be cooked in a variety of ways. Eating cooked meal is far superior for human nutrition to eating raw or roasted seeds themselves. And its importance can be understood when we take note of the fact that, while cattle and other animals eat massive amounts of green plants, it is humans who flourish by eating plant seeds. Grinding meant that a whole new supply of nutritious foods was readily available.
Two other important horizons are basketry and pottery. Both utilities are essential to storage and cooking. The basketry horizon probably preceded the pottery horizon. In some areas where beautiful, functional basketry was made pottery was never even practiced. In the Northwest, while pottery was never practiced in addition to fine basketry, wooden boxes were carved and used for cooking. Yet another horizon of interest is that belonging to the bow and arrow. This, however, falls outside of the archaic tradition, for most societies. While the bow and arrow seems to have moved across the archaic arctic coastlines into Northern Canada by 3000 B.C., it did not spread southward until much later, arriving in California and the Southwest as late as 600 A.D. While an important horizon, then, the bow and arrow had little impact on archaic societies, which continued to hunt with the atlatl.
As I have mentioned earlier, the beginning of agriculture is taken by some archaeologists as the horizon marking the end of the archaic and the beginning of modern societies. This is a difficult horizon to recognize, however. It is clear that agriculture began in conjunction with hunting and gathering and that it did not immediately replace hunting and gathering. If the horizon, as such, is when dependence on agriculture became substantial, or defining, then this is very difficult to determine. In the early phases of agriculture, we have the further problem of differentiating between plant use through gathering, preferential plant treatment (weeding, irrigation, etc.), and actual seed-planting. Simply finding seeds or plant remains does not guarantee the conclusion that agriculture was happening.
Having said all of this about the problems of archaeo-botanic research, it seems clear that agriculture began in Mesoamerica by around 7000 B.C., almost as early as its beginning in the Middle East for the development of "Western Civilization." It moved north through Mexico as millennia passed, arriving in the Middle West as early as 5000 B.C. A more arid-tolerant form of agriculture ultimately found its way into the Southwest by around 2000 B.C. It is clear, however, that agriculture in the Southwest was viewed as an adjunct to hunting and gathering until around 500 A.D. To be truly agriculture, we have to be convinced that seeds were being gathered and then planted in cultivated areas. Botanists suggest, further, that agriculture suggests the creation of new hybrids; they are able to track these processes by close study of pollens found in archaeological sites.
Early agriculture in the Middle West began with squash and some locally available plants; ultimately, however, corn rose to the greatest importance. In the Southwest, an arid-tolerant form of corn and beans rose to great importance, the combination of corn and beans providing a complete and complementary set of nutritional needs. Squash, peppers, and gourds also became very important in the Southwest. For Western indigenous people, agriculture was limited to various early societies such as the mogollon (Arizona), anasazi (Four Corners), and freemont (Utah) people, from 1000 B.C. to 1300 A.D. Then, the pueblo people who descended from these were fully agricultural. In addition, agriculture spread along the Colorado River, extending south between California and Arizona and including various desert dwellers. Agriculture did not penetrate the Great Basin, though it was incipient, through irrigation and weeding, all along the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, among the Paiute people. Similarly, agriculture did not exist in the remainder of California nor along the Northwest Coast. The single exception to this seems to be planting and cultivation of tobaccos from northwestern California north.
While the Great Basin seems to have remained largely archaic in its lifeways, the remainder of the Western United States moved into a modern sedentary lifeway with or without agriculture. The key issue seems to have been a return to a focal economy (called "neo-focal") enabled by the discovery of staple foods. To qualify as a staple food, something must be available in great supply and it must be possible to store it without spoilage for a long period of time. The horizon of staple-food economies, like the horizons leading to the archaic period, represents a significant advance in science and technology. Massive harvesting was required; then, processing and storage were also required. In all cases, this demanded new knowledge and tools. An example, in California, is the acorn harvest. Acorns provided very substantial nutrition and could be harvested in huge quantities all over California. Acorns could be stored in granaries for more than a year; when dried, they could be processed into meal. Processing was a tedious task and demanded significant technological invention. The acorn meal could be used in a variety of cooking procedures. California people ate tremendous quantities of acorn meal as soups and cakes.
The existence of staple-food technologies allowed most people to live in a single region and brought the annual round concept to its end. It also stabilized life in many ecological niches that would otherwise have been inhabited for merely short periods of time. Most important of all, sedentary life patterns allowed population growth and brought about the development of much more complicated societies. This is the period of time when California societies developed tremendous diversity, leading to the existence of more than one hundred different tribes and languages, by the time that Spanish missionaries began to settle along the Pacific Coast, from San Diego to San Francisco.
Copyright 1999 by Tad Beckman, Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA 91711