Early Human Life on the Southeastern Coastal Plain

by Albert C. Goodyear (Editor), Christopher R. Moore (Editor)

Overview

Bringing together major archaeological research projects from Virginia to Alabama, this volume explores the rich prehistory of the Southeastern Coastal Plain. Contributors consider how the region’s warm weather, abundant water, and geography have long been optimal for the habitation of people beginning 50,000 years ago. They highlight demographic changes and cultural connections across this wide span of time and space.

New data are provided here for many sites, including evidence for human settlement before the Clovis period at the famous Topper site in South Carolina. Contributors track the progression of sea level rise that gradually submerged shorelines and landscapes, and they discuss the possibility of a comet collision that triggered the Younger Dryas cold reversion and contributed to the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna like mastodons and mammoths. Essays also examine the various stone materials used by prehistoric foragers, the location of chert quarries, and the details stone tools reveal about social interaction and mobility.

This volume synthesizes more than fifty years of research and addresses many of today’s controversial questions in the archaeology of the early Southeast, such as the sudden demise of the Clovis technoculture and the recognition of the mysterious "Middle Paleoindian" period.

Contributors: Robert J. Austin | Mark J. Brooks | Christopher R. Moore | I Randolph Daniel | Joseph E. Wilkinson | Joseph Schuldenrein | Allen West | David K. Thulman | James K. Feathers | Terry E. Barbour II | Douglas Sain | Thomas A. Jennings | Albert C. Goodyear | Andrew H. Ivester | Malcolm A. LeCompte | Adam M. Burke | James S. Dunbar | Jon Endonino | Richard Estabrook | H. Blaine Ensor | Victor Adedeji | Douglas J. Kennett | Ashley M. Smallwood | Kara Bridgman Sweeney | Sam Upchurch | James P. Kennett | Wendy S. Wolbach | M. Scott Harris | Ted Bunch | David G. Anderson | C. Andrew Hemmings | James. M. Adovasio

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781683400349
Publisher:	University Press of Florida
Publication date:	05/22/2018
Series:	Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series
Pages:	434
Product dimensions:	6.13(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.13(d)

About the Author

Albert C. Goodyear is a research affiliate at the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology and director of the Southeastern Paleoamerican Survey.

Christopher R. Moore is a geoarchaeologist with the Savannah River Archaeological Research Program.

Table of Contents

Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

Preface and Acknowledgments

1. Introduction

Albert C. Goodyear and Christopher R. Moore

2. The Pre-Clovis Occupation of the Topper Site, Allendale County, South Carolina

Albert C. Goodyear and Douglas A. Stain

3. Capps: A Levallois-Like Flaked Stone Technology in North America

H. Blaine Ensor

4. The Vero Site (8IR009): Current Investigations Suggest Pleistocene Human Occupation

C. Andrew Hemmings, J.M. Adovasio, F. J. Vento, and A. Vega

5. Paleogeography and Sea-Level Positions on the SE US Continental Margin since the LGM: Implications to Potential Habitation Sites

M. Scott Harris

6. The Quarry Cluster Approach to Chert Provenance: A Review of the Method with Examples from Early Florida Sites

Robert J. Austin, Sam B. Upchurch, James S. Dunbar, Richard W. Estabrook, Jon C. Endonino, and Adam Burke

7. Paleoindians in the South Carolina Coastal Plain: Tracking Pleistocene-Holocene Transitions

Ashley M. Smallwood, Albert C. Goodyear, Thomas A. Jennings, and Douglas A. Sain

8. Brief Overview of the Younger Dryas Cosmic Impact Datum Layer 12,800 Years Ago and its Archaeological Utility

Malcolm A. LeCompte, Victor A. Adedeji, James P. Kennett, Ted E. Bunch, and Wendy S. Wolbach

9. Potential Consequences of the YDB Cosmic Impact at 12.8 ka: Climate, Humans, and Megafauna

James P. Kennett, Douglas J. Kennett, Malcolm A. LeCompte, and Allen West

10. Regional Manifestations of Late Quarternary Climate Change and Archaeological Site Burial along the South Atlantic Coastal Plain

Christopher R. Moore, Mark J. Brooks, I. Randolph Daniel Jr., Andrew H. Ivester, James K. Feathers, and Terry E. Barbour

11. Multiple Scales of Interaction in the Early Side-Notched Horizons

Kara Bridgman Sweeney

12. Discerning Early Archaic Bolen Territories Using Geometric Morphometrics

David K. Thulman

13. Across the Coastal Plain from Savannah to Santee: Early Archaic Mobility and Raw Material Utilization in South Carolina

Joseph E. Wilkinson

14. Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene Archaeology of the Southeastern Atlantic Scope

David G. Anderson

15. Migrations and the Early Human Ecology of the Southeastern Atlantic Scope: A Long View

Joseph Schuldenrein

References

List of Contributors

Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Explores the current diversity of academic thought on the early human occupation of the American Southeast."—Ervan Garrison, author of Techniques in Archaeological Geology

"The early occupation of the Southeast for too long has been treated as essentially invariable and contributors to this volume address this with new methods and data."—Philip J. Carr, coeditor of Contemporary Lithic Analysis in the Southeast: Problems, Solutions, and Interpretations

Editorial Reviews

Focuses on some of the important questions surrounding early colonization and the spread of populations in the American South. If you are interested in the first ~7,000 years of North American prehistory, you need this book.”—American Antiquity

“A useful reference for ongoing scholarship into the earliest cultural periods in Southeastern USA.”—Antiquity

From the Publisher