Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Paleoindians

  • Reference work entry
Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology

Introduction

Paleoindian (also spelled Paleo-Indian, Palaeo-Indian), or literally “Old” or “Ancient” Indian, is a term widely employed to refer to the archaeological record of the Americas dating to the Late Pleistocene to Early Holocene from as early as perhaps 11,500 14C years BP to as late as 8,000 years BP in some areas (13,500–8,800 calibrated years BP). The term is often used to distinguish this segment of the archaeological record from that of potentially earlier dating, “Pre-Clovis” peoples, and later-dating, Post-Paleoindian “Archaic” and other peoples. A basic distinction has often been made, particularly in North America, between “Early” Paleoindians (prior to c. 10,400–10,100 BP), who produced distinctive, flaked, lanceolate, stone point tips with grooved or fluted bases (see Fig. 1), and “Late” Paleoindians (after c.10,400–10,100 BP) who made unfluted lanceolate and stemmed points. Many different and finer Paleoindian regional/temporal subdivisions, variously referred to...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 5,499.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Bamforth, D.B. 2002. High-Tech foragers? Folsom and later Paleoindian technology on the Great Plains. Journal of World Prehistory 16: 55-98.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bradley, B. & D. Stanford. 2004. The North Atlantic ice-edge corridor: a possible Palaeolithic route to the New World. World Archaeology 36: 459-78.

    Google Scholar 

  • Deller, D.B., C.J. Ellis & J.R. Keron. 2009. Understanding cache variability: a deliberately burned early Paleoindian tool assemblage from the Crowfield site, southwestern Ontario, Canada. American Antiquity 74: 371-97.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dillehay, T. D. 2000. The settlement of the Americas, a new prehistory. New York (NY): Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ellis, C. J. 2009. The Crowfield and Caradoc sites, Ontario: glimpses of Palaeo-Indian sacred ritual and world view, in D.L. Keenlyside & J-L. Pilon (ed.) Painting the past with a broad brush. Papers in honour of James Valliere Wright (Mercury series Archaeology Paper 170): 319-52. Gatineau (QC): Canadian Museum of Civilization.

    Google Scholar 

  • Krieger, A.D. 1964. Early man in the New World, in J.D. Jennings & E. Norbeck (ed.) Prehistoric man in the New World: 23-81. Chicago (IL): The University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Madsen, D.B. 2007. The Paleoarchaic to Archaic transition in the Great Basin, in K.E. Graf & D.N. Schmitt (ed.) Paleoindian or paleoarchaic? Great Basin human ecology at the Pleistocene-Holocene transition: 3-20. Salt Lake City (UT): The University of Utah Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mason, R.J. 1962. The Paleo-Indian tradition in eastern North America. Current Anthropology 3: 227-46.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meltzer, D. J. 2009. First peoples in a new world: colonizing Ice Age America. Berkeley (CA): University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pitblado, B. 2011. A tale of two migrations: reconciling recent biological and archaeological evidence for the Pleistocene peopling of the Americas. Journal of Archaeological Research 19: 327-75.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roberts, F.H.H.Jr. 1940. Developments in the problem of the North American Paleoindian. in Essays in historical anthropology of North America in honor of John R. Swanton in celebration of his fortieth year with the Smithsonian Institution (Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 100): 51-116. Washington (DC): Smithsonian.

    Google Scholar 

  • Waguespack, N. & T. Surovell. 2003. Clovis hunting strategies, or how to make out on plentiful resources. American Antiquity 68: 333-52.

    Google Scholar 

  • Waters, M.R., S.L. Forman, T.A. Jennings, L.C. Nordt, S.G. Driese, J.M. Feinberg, J.L. Keene, J. Halligan, A. Lindquist, J. Pierson, C.T. Hallmark, M.B. Collins & J.E. Wiederhold. 2011. The Buttermilk Creek complex and the origins of Clovis at the Debra L. Friedkin site, Texas. Science 331: 1599-1603.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wormington, H. M. 1957. Ancient man in North America (Popular series 4). Denver (CO): Denver Museum of Natural History.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yellowhorn, E. 2003. Regarding the American Paleolithic. Canadian Journal of Archaeology 27: 62-73.

    Google Scholar 

Further Reading

  • Anderson, D. & K.E. Sassaman (ed.) 1996. The Paleoindian and early archaic Southeast. Tuscaloosa (AL): University of Alabama Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bamforth, D.B. 2011. Origin stories, archaeological evidence, and Postclovis Paleoindian bison hunting on the Great Plains. American Antiquity 76: 24-40.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bever, M. R. 2001. Stone tool technology and the Mesa complex: developing a framework of Alaskan Paleoindian prehistory. Arctic Anthropology 38(2): 98-118.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bonnichsen, R. & K. Turnmire. (ed.) 1999. Ice-Age peoples of North America. Corvallis (OR): Center for the Study of the First Americans.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bradley, B.A., M.B. Collins & A. Hemmings. 2010. Clovis technology (International Monographs in Prehistory, Archaeological series 17). Ann Arbor (MI).

    Google Scholar 

  • Ellis, C.J. & J.C. Lothrop. (ed.) 1989. Eastern Paleoindian lithic resource use. Boulder (CO): Westview Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fiedel, S.J. 1999. Older than we thought: implications of corrected dates for Paleoindians. American Antiquity 64: 95-115.

    Google Scholar 

  • Figgins, J. D. 1927. The antiquity of man in America. Natural History 27: 229-39.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frison, G.C. & B.A. Bradley. 1980. Folsom tools and technology at the Hanson site, Wyoming. Albuquerque (NM): University of New Mexico Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gillespie, J. 2007. Enculturing an unknown world: caches and Clovis landscape ideology. Canadian Journal of Archaeology 31: 171-89.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gramly, R.M. (ed.) 1984. New experiments upon the record of eastern Palaeoindian cultures. Archaeology of Eastern North America 12 (whole issue).

    Google Scholar 

  • Griffin, J. B. 1967. Eastern North American archaeology: a summary. Science 156: 175-91.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hayden, B.D. 1982. Interaction parameters and the demise of Paleo-Indian craftsmanship. Plains Anthropologist 27: 109-23.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haynes, C.V. 1982. Were Clovis progenitors in Beringia?, in D. Hopkins, J. Mathews, C. Schweger & S. Young (ed.) Paleoecology of Beringia: 383-98. New York (NY): Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kelly, R.L. & L. Todd. 1988. Coming into the country: early Paleoindian hunting and mobility. American Antiquity 53: 231-44.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kilby, D.H. 2008. An investigation of Clovis caches: content, function, and technological organization. PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico. Ann Arbor (MI): University Microfilms.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kornfeld, M., M. Harkin & J. Durr. 1999. Landscapes and peopling of the Americas, in J. Gillepsie, S. Tupakka & C. de Mille (ed.) On being first: cultural innovation and environmental consequences of first peopling: 149-62. Calgary (AL): Archaeological Association of the University of Calgary.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lynch, T.F. 1991. Paleoindians in South America: a discrete and identifiable cultural stage?, in R. Bonnichsen & K. Turnmire (ed.) Clovis origins and adaptations: 255-359. Corvallis (OR): Center for the Study of the First Americans.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meltzer, D.J. 1988. Late Pleistocene human adaptations in eastern North America. Journal of World Prehistory 2: 1-52.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meltzer, D.J. & B.D. Smith. 1986. Paleoindian and Early Archaic subsistence strategies in eastern North America, in: S.W. Neusius (ed.) Foraging, collecting and harvesting: Archaic period subsistence and settlement in the Eastern Woodlands (Occasional Paper 6): 3-31. Carbondale (IL): Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Center for Archaeological Investigations.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morrow, J.A. & C. Gnecco. (ed.) 2006. Paleoindian archaeology: a hemispheric perspective. Gainesville (FL): University Presses of Florida.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pearson, G.A. 2004. Pan-American Paleoindian dispersals and the origins of fishtail projectile points as seen through the lithic raw material reduction strategies and tool-manufacturing techniques at the Guardiria site, Turrialba valley, Costa Rica, in C.M. Barton, G.A. Clark, D.R. Yesner & G.A. Pearson (ed.) The settlement of the American continents, a multi-disciplinary approach to human geography: 85-102. Tucson (AZ): The University of Arizona Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roosevelt, A.C., J. Douglas & L. Brown. 2002. The migrations and adaptations of the first Americans: Clovis and Pre-Clovis viewed from South America, in N.G. Jablonski (ed.) The first Americans: the Pleistocene colonization of the New World (Memoirs of the California Academy of Sciences 27): 159-235. San Francisco (CA): California Academy of Sciences.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, A. G. 1957. Suggested changes in the nomenclature of the major American time periods. American Antiquity 23: 169.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stafford, M. D., G. C. Frison, D. Stanford & G. Ziemans. 2002. Digging for the color of life: Paleoindian red ochre mining at the Powars II Site, Platte County, Wyoming, U.S.A. Geoarcheology 18: 71-90.

    Google Scholar 

  • Steele, D.G. & J.F. Powell. 2002. Facing the past: a view of the North American human fossil record, in N. G. Jablonski (ed.) The first Americans: the Pleistocene colonization of the New World (Memoirs of the California Academy of Sciences 27): 93-122. San Francisco (CA): California Academy of Sciences.

    Google Scholar 

  • Straus, L.G., D. J. Meltzer & T. Goebel. 2006. Ice Age Atlantis? Exploring the Solutrean-Clovis ‘connection’. World Archaeology 37: 507-32.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tankersley, K. B. 2004. The concept of Clovis and the peopling of North America, in C.M. Barton, G.A. Clark, D.R. Yesner & G.A. Pearson (ed.) The settlement of the American continents, a multi-disciplinary approach to human geography: 49-63. Tucson (AZ): The University of Arizona Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walker, R. B. & B. N. Driskell. 2007. Foragers of the terminal Pleistocene in North America. Lincoln (NB): University of Nebraska Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Waters, M.R. & T.W. Stafford, Jr. 2007. Redefining the age of Clovis: implications for the peopling of the Americas. Science 315: 1122-6.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada

    Christopher J. Ellis

Authors
  1. Christopher J. Ellis
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christopher J. Ellis .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Archaeology, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia

    Claire Smith

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York

About this entry

Cite this entry

Ellis, C.J. (2014). Paleoindians. In: Smith, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_695

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_695

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-0426-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-0465-2

  • eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation